On Dec. 21, in a series of tweets, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple would cancel or postpone mass production for a fourth generation iPhone SE. Now, in a note to clients — as noted by 9toMac — he says it has been canceled.
Interestingly, he said the smartphone would have been the first to sport an Apple-built modem.
“Due to concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to par with Qualcomm’s, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let the low-end iPhone SE 4 adopt it first, and decide whether to let the iPhone 16 use its baseband chip depending on the development status of iPhone SE 4,” writes Kuo. “However, the cancelation of the iPhone SE 4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive supplier of baseband chips for the 2H24 new iPhone 16 series, which is better than the market consensus that Qualcomm will start losing iPhone orders in 2024.”
At one point, the tech giant was expected to start equipping its smartphone line-up with its custom-build modems in 2023. Then the plan was apparently delayed to 2024 or beyond.
Apple currently uses Qualcomm modems. However, the tech giant acquired Intel’s smartphone modem business in July 2019 and added 2,200 Intel engineers to its chipset operations globally.
