Look for Apple’s in-house 5G modems to debut next year

ASE Technology is in preliminary talks with Apple for backend orders associated with the tech giant’s first self-designed 5G modem chips set for use in 2023, according to DigiTimes. Apple has already lined up its manufacturing partner, TSMC, to product its in-house 5G modem chips.

In May 2021 analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told clients that the first Apple-designed 5G modem is likely to debut in 2023 iPhones.

“We predict that the ‌iPhone‌ will adopt Apple’s own design 5G baseband chips in 2023 at the earliest,” he said. “As Android sales in the high-end 5G phone market are sluggish, Qualcomm will be forced to compete for more orders in the low-end market to compensate for Apple’s order loss. When the supply constraints improve, MediaTek and Qualcomm will have less bargaining power over brands, resulting in significantly higher competitive pressure in the mid-to low- end market.”

The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) thinks Kuo is spot on. I also think that we’ll see Apple 5G modem in not only iPhones, but also iPad Pros — and, hopefully, Mac laptops.

Apple currently uses Qualcomm modems. However, the tech giant certainly plans to build its own modems. Apple acquired Intel’s smartphone modem business in July 2019 and added 2,200 Intel engineers to its chipset operations globally.