Apple is Taking its Modem Chip Business in its Own Hands

Apple was not having a nice experience with relying on other manufacturers for Modem Chip Design for some time now. So, Apple is moving its modem chip engineering unit into its in-house hardware technology group to avoid issues like dual sourcing and sale bans. The project has already started under the leadership of Johny Srouji, the SVP of hardware technologies.

Srouji joined Apple in 2018 as chip design chief and has worked on custom A-series processors that power iPhones and iPads and a special Bluetooth chip that connect these devices to with its AirPods wireless headphones and other Apple accessories.

Modems take lots of years and tons of money to be manufactured and this one will need to have 5G support. That's why we can't expect to see next year's or next to next year's iPhones featuring Apple's own chips.

Apple has previously used Qualcomm Inc chips and shifted to Intel Corp chips in 2016 and dropped Qualcomm from iPhones released last year. But this move will surely save Apple some money as Qualcomm charged $30 for a modem and wanted $7.50 in royalties on top of that.

(Source)