Mint Explainer: The great significance of Apple’s first-ever custom modem chip for iPhones
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Apple Inc. on Wednesday unveiled its first-ever custom modem chip, Apple C1, while launching the iPhone 16e.
The chip, which was years in the making, is not just about connectivity speed. It marks a major shift that can significantly alter the structure of the global technology supply chain in the long run. Mint explains why.
The move is not sudden. Apple’s move to develop a modem has been a long time coming. In 2018, Apple and US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc.
played out a long-drawn battle across courts in China, Germany and the US over alleged patent infringements by the iPhone maker. In April 2019, the two companies agreed to an out-of-court settlement—but reports claimed that Apple paid Qualcomm up to $6 billion to settle. Apple’s settlement was imperative.
Qualcomm, at the time, was making its first generation 5G modems for upcoming smartphones—which were slated to launch across global markets from 2019 onward. Also read | How the iPhone 16e might help Apple log record sales this year Apple, historically, had always licensed its smartphone connectivity modems from Qualcomm. But the lawsuit at the time raised a conflict in accessing 5G on the company’s cutting-edge smartphones.
This setback eventually, after nearly seven years since the lawsuit with Qualcomm began, led to Apple finally showcasing its own modem design to the world. Apple tried. During its lawsuit with Qualcomm, Apple selected Intel Corp.
to make custom modems for it with 5G connectivity. However, Intel kept assigning and missing multiple deadlines, which eventually led to Apple’s iPhone 11 in 2019 launching without 5G connectivity. In July of that year, Apple bought Intel’s modem engineering division for $1 billion.
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