Supply chain sources have revealed that Apple may decide to stop developing its self-developed 5G modem chip after multiple failed attempts to improve it.

In September of this year, Qualcomm announced that they had reached a new agreement with Apple to supply the Snapdragon series 5G modems and RF systems for Apple's iPhones launched in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

The current supply agreement between Apple and Qualcomm was signed in April 2019 during the settlement of the patent licensing fee dispute between the two companies. At that time, a multi-year chip supply agreement and a six-year patent licensing agreement were signed, which began on April 1, 2019 and included a two-year extension option. After a new three-year supply agreement is reached, the two-year patent authorization agreement extension option is also likely to take effect.

The main difficulties for Apple's self-developed 5G baseband are twofold. The first is Intel legacy code that needs to be rewritten by Apple, and adding new features may interrupt existing ones; The second is to be careful not to infringe on Qualcomm's patents during the chip development process.

Industry insiders say that although the manufacturing of baseband chips is relatively easy, to ensure that they can stably adapt to signals from different countries and regions, a large amount of repeated testing work is required, which will consume a lot of energy and manpower.

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