After a long-term legal tussle between one of the world’s most valuable company Apple and chip maker giant Qualcomm, the companies both had an agreement back in 2019 which ultimately affected the 5G smartphone modem development of Intel and the new loser could in fact be Qualcomm after Apple has reportedly began its own cellular modem.
Apple is one of the few companies on the planet that tries to be less dependent on others for supplies especially for critical components on its devices and this seems to be another move towards that route.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Johny Srouji who is a senior VP of Apple Hardware Technologies is said to have made the announcement during a meeting with the company’s staffs. According to the reports, he said the company kicks off the first internal cellular modem development a decision which could have an impact on the company as a full-blown cellular modem maker at least in the near future.
The VP also says the U$1 billion acquisition Intel’s modem business helped build a team of engineers. If you remember, Apple hired the head of 5G mobile technology from Intel an also hired engineers from Qualcomm. Adding to the tally of wireless chips, he also said that this modem will join Apple’s W-series(Apple Watch) and iPhone‘s U1 ultrawide-band chips.
Cellular modems are very essential to smartphone as they are the point of internet connections and GSM connectivity and with Apple going on its way to make this might mean Qualcomm losing one of its big market to Apple which continues to make its own hardware components such as camera chips, processors and now cellular modems.
Besides, after Qualcomm acquired the deal of supplying 5G modems to Apple, Intel reported a multi-million dollar loss and accused the former of anti-competitive practices. However, it looks like Qualcomm will be in a similar situation in the future. As a head start, report says Qualcomm’s shares dropped about 4.4% in New York on Friday(December 12) at 9:37 AM(GMT+5:30).
Apple’s goal could have a big impact on Qualcomm’s future market share as 5G becomes more popular across the globe even though it still maintains that relationship with other smartphone brands. Apple’s 5G smartphone had been projected to skyrocket and put the company right above all other existing 5G smartphone makers around the world.
But as of now, Qualcomm still have 4 years ahead of it to supply Apple which is a good enough period to get things right and the company is furthering its cause as it plans to release the much powerful Snapdragon 888 chipset which is said to be much faster and efficient.
Srouji also said Apple is working on a number of Mac chipsets as its said to be planning to entirely oust Intel’s fastest chips giving hints at a processor with about 32-cores.
