Apple is reportedly planning to incorporate its own 5G Modem chips into iPhone models, starting from 2025. Insights provided by TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, known for accurately predicting Apple's hardware developments, suggest that the company intends to reduce its reliance on external component suppliers, including Qualcomm. Huawei is also poised to pose a challenge, as the phone manufacturer recently unveiled new devices featuring its self-developed Kirin 9000S and other Kirin chips, set to be integrated into phones in 2024.
According to Kuo's Medium post, Qualcomm may not only lose Huawei's chip orders entirely from 2024 but could also experience a decrease in shipments to other Chinese smartphone manufacturers. In the analyst's assessment, Huawei purchased up to 42 million chips from Qualcomm in the previous year, a figure that reached 25 million in 2022. To maintain its market presence in China, the company is expected to initiate a price competition by Q4 2023.
Beyond Huawei, Qualcomm faces potential challenges from Samsung, which may employ its own Exynos 2400 chipset in its phones starting in 2024, as outlined in Kuo's analysis. Additionally, Apple has been rumored to be planning the deployment of its own modem chip for iPhones, potentially making the transition by 2025.
It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Apple has been linked to the development of its proprietary Apple 5G modem. In April, analyst Jeff Pu from Haitong International Securities indicated that Apple was resuming work on the fourth-generation iPhone SE, featuring the company's purported in-house 5G modem chip.
Earlier this year, Kuo had also forecasted the arrival of an iPhone SE model in the following year, equipped with a 5G chip developed by Apple. He had tweeted that "the significant decline in Qualcomm's Apple orders in the foreseeable future is a foregone conclusion." Initially, Kuo had suggested that the rumored iPhone SE 4 would debut in 2024, equipped with Apple's 5G baseband chip produced using a 4nm process. Subsequently, Kuo updated his prediction to align with Pu's claim that Apple's in-house 5G modem could make its debut in an iPhone by 2025.
