Despite that Apple is using its A-series (for iPhones) and M-series (for iPads and Macs) chips on its entire lineup, they don’t have their own 5G modem yet. Apple uses Qualcomm’s 5G chips, and Qualcomm recently announced an updated agreement with Apple where it will supply the latter with Snapdragon 5G chips until 2026.
“This agreement reinforces Qualcomm’s track record of sustained leadership across 5G technologies and products,” Qualcomm said in their brief statement on the extended partnership. This new partnership is good news for Qualcomm as it will boost its sales further. For perspective, 21% of Qualcomm’s 2022 fiscal revenue of $44.2 billion came from Apple.
This also means that we expect the iPhone 15 and 16 series to use Qualcomm 5G chips and that the iPhone 17 series might be the first phones to use an in-house Apple 5G modem. To recall, Apple did have plans to launch an iPhone SE 4 with its own 5G chip, but that has been delayed to 2025. There are no details about Apple’s in-house 5G modems yet, so we don’t know how they will be better compared to Qualcomm’s current 5G chips.
Similar to its move to use its own processors, Apple’s plan to eventually use its own 5G models is to save production costs and improve power efficiency.
