Apple Starts Building Its Own Modem as It Aims for a Future Without Qualcomm

Report claims Apple is working on a cellular modem chip

Apple’s plans of building its very own cellular modem chip are not necessarily new, but according to a recent report from Bloomberg, the company has finally started the work on this project.

It’s not hard to see what the final goal actually is for this project, especially because Apple and Qualcomm aren’t necessarily the best friends after their famous legal dispute that ended not a long time ago. So Apple hopes that by building its own modem it could finally become independent and thus fully embrace a future without Qualcomm.

By the looks of things, however, the work on the modem is still in its early phases. Johny Srouji, Apple’s vice president of hardware technologies, has recently briefed a series of employees on the company’s plans, confirming the chip is currently under development.

Unsurprisingly, Apple is betting big on its acquisition of Intel’s modem division, a move that was announced last year and which cost the Cupertino-based tech giant $1 billion.

The Intel modem business takeover

Srouji was one of the Apple executives supporting the takeover of Intel’s phone modem business one year ago, insisting this would allow the company to become more independent in the phone market.

“Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they’ll thrive in Apple’s creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward,” Srouji said at that point.

At this point, it’s not exactly known when the first iPhones equipped with Apple’s in-house built modem are supposed to get the go-ahead, though for now, you’d better not hold your breath for this thing to happen too soon. Needless to say, Apple has remained completely tight-lipped on everything in this regard.