Apple Inc has started building its own cellular modem for future devices, a move that would replace components from Qualcomm Inc, the company’s top chip executive told staff on Thursday.
Apple senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji made the disclosure in a town hall meeting with company employees, according to people familiar with the comments.
“This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem, which will enable another key strategic transition,” he said. “Long-term strategic investments like these are a critical part of enabling our products and making sure we have a rich pipeline of innovative technologies for our future.”
A cellular modem is one of the most important parts of a smartphone, enabling phone calls and connection to the Internet via cellular networks.
Srouji said the US$1 billion acquisition of Intel Corp’s modem business last year helped Apple build a team of hardware and software engineers to develop its own cellular modem.
He said the modem is one of a few wireless chips the company designs, including the W-series in the Apple Watch and the U1 ultrawide-band chip in the iPhone for precise location information.
The latest iPhones with 5G use parts from Qualcomm.
Before that, Apple used Intel parts for a few years and then purchased that business unit from the chipmaker.
Srouji did not say when the cellular modem would be ready to ship in products, but a patent agreement last year between Apple and Qualcomm includes a six-year licensing pact.
Qualcomm charges license fees to phone makers based on wireless patents it owns, regardless of whether they use its chips or not.
In the meeting with employees, Srouji also highlighted Apple’s other work on chips, including the new M1 processors in the latest MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini.
Apple is working on a “family” of Mac chips, Srouji said.
Apple is planning upgrades that are designed to improve on Intel’s fastest computer chips, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week.
Apple has been hiring engineers from Qualcomm for years to help it build the modem, and has offices focused on the effort in San Diego, at its Cupertino, California headquarters and in Europe.
The move extends Apple’s push toward greater reliance on its own parts at the expense of Qualcomm, Intel and others.
Qualcomm gets about 11 percent of its revenue from Apple, while Intel gets about 7 percent of sales from the iPhone maker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Apple started shipping its own chips in 2010, with the A4 main processor in the iPhone 4 and original iPad.
Since then, it has expanded this work to custom camera processors, chips to handle artificial intelligence tasks and collect motion data, along with chips for Apple Watches, Apple TVs and headphones.
The Mac processors are some of Apple’s most ambitious chip designs to date. Cellular modem development is also challenging.
Separately, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared new details on the company’s plan to return to the office during a virtual town hall meeting with employees on Thursday.
Cook said it “seems likely” that the majority of teams would not be back before June next year.
Apple has historically had an office-centric culture, but the CEO implied that the company’s success this year during the pandemic lockdown could enable more flexibility to work remotely in the future.
Still, Cook has been adamant publicly about his desire for staff to ultimately return to the office.
From India to China to the US, automakers cannot make vehicles — not that no one wants any, but because a more than US$450 billion industry for semiconductors got blindsided. How did both sides end up here? Over the past two weeks, automakers across the world have bemoaned the shortage of chips. Germany’s Audi, owned by Volkswagen AG, would delay making some of its high-end vehicles because of what chief executive officer Markus Duesmann called a “massive” shortfall in an interview with the Financial Times. The firm has furloughed more than 10,000 workers and reined in production. That is a further blow
MOBILE SMART: The Dimensity 1200 is 22 percent better in terms of performance than its predecessor, and 25 percent more power-efficient, the handset chip designer said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday unveiled its premium 5G processors — the Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100 — as it vies for a larger slice of the world’s rapidly growing 5G smartphone market. Manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) 6-nanometer process technology, the Dimensity 1200 processor performs 22 percent better than the previous generation Dimensity 1000+ processor, and is 25 percent more power-efficient, MediaTek said. Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Realme Mobile Telecommunications (Shenzhen) Co (銳爾覓移動通信) are to be the first adopters of the latest Dimensity chips, the companies said during a virtual media briefing. Xiaomi plans to equip its first
Answering to a reported request by Germany to help address a chip shortage in its auto industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said that it was in talks with domestic chip suppliers. Foreign media over the weekend reported that German Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier had sent a request to Taipei to ask Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to cooperate more closely with German automakers to provide microchips and sensors, to bridge a shortage that has emerged over the past few months. The MOEA said that it had not yet received the request and could therefore not elaborate
FOCUS ON FOUNDRIES: An analyst said that some investors would be disappointed because they were expecting a larger announcement of a partnership with TSMC Intel Corp’s incoming chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger on Thursday pledged to regain the company’s lead in chip manufacturing, countering growing calls from some investors to shed that part of its business. “I am confident that the majority of our 2023 products will be manufactured internally,” Gelsinger said. “At the same time, given the breadth of our portfolio, it’s likely that we will expand our use of external foundries for certain technologies and products.” He plans to provide more details after officially taking over the CEO role on Feb. 15, but Gelsinger was clear that Intel is sticking with its once mighty
RSS