Oliver Haslam on October 13, 2019, 10:08 am

Apple To Launch iPhones With In-House Custom-Made 5G Chip By 2022

There’s no 5G in the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, or iPhone 11 Pro Max but it’s rumored to be in the cards for next year. Qualcomm is lined up to make the modems, but Apple will take over as soon as 2022 according to a new report.

Apple picked up the remnants of Intel’s 5G modem business earlier this year and it intends to make good use of it.

According to a report from Fast Company, Apple intends to have its own 5G modems ready for the 2022 iPhone, allowing it to ditch Qualcomm.

Apple signed a deal with Qualcomm recently after the pair agreed to call off the ongoing legal battles between them. Intel subsequently pulled out of the consumer 5G modem business, leading to Apple’s acquisition. Once Apple has its own 5G modem ready it will be able to bring yet another chip design in-house.

But designing a new modem isn’t an easy feat, and the belief is that 2022 may just come too soon for Apple.

In fact, bringing a new modem to the finish line in two years is really pushing it, my source said. After all the design work is done, and the fabrication of the chips themselves is underway, an arduous testing and certification process still awaits.

Apple will have to put the modem through network optimization testing to make sure it plays nice with the carriers’ wireless networks. The modem must be tested to ensure compliance with global standards, and undergo another battery of tests to satisfy FCC requirements.

No matter when it happens it’s only a matter of time before an iPhone ships with an Apple modem inside. Apple is said to also want to build that modem into the A-series SoC at some point, although that might not be possible by 2022.