We recently reported that the China-based Huawei, which is among the very few smartphone manufacturers who make their own chipsets, could be open to supply 5G chips to Apple.
For those who are unaware, Huawei develops its own processors under the Kirin brand for the Huawei and Honor branded smartphones. But, its chipsets are not sold to other smartphone makers and are limited to Huawei and Honor smartphones only.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Huawei CEO confirmed that the company is open to selling its 5G chips to Apple. In the same video, he can be seen praising Apple and the western management style, which helped the company grow further.
Supplying chips to its biggest rival Apple is a surprising move from Huawei as the company’s executive had previously said that the Huawei chipsets are for its own internal products such as phones and IoT devices.
Huawei’s Balong 5000 modem chip supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks. It is also compatible with 4G LTE, 3G, and 2G networks. The Balong 5000 5G modem chip will debut on Huawei’s first phone to support the next generation of wireless connectivity — Mate X, which also happens to be the company’s first foldable smartphone.
Apple is currently in a tight spot with its current chipset supplier — Intel which supplies wireless modems for iPhones and iPads. It’s 5G-ready XMM 8160 modems would be available for its customers in the second half of 2019. But a report claims that Apple has “lost confidence” in Intel after the world’s largest chipset manufacturer failed to meet certain development deadlines.
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The development comes at a time when China-based tech giant Huawei is aiming to dethrone Apple and Samsung to grab the top spot in the global smartphones market share. However, Huawei comes to Apple’s side when Qualcomm and Samsung both have refused to provide their 5G modems to Apple. While Qualcomm’s denial is understandable given their ongoing legal battle, Samsung refused to supply by citing lack of supply for its Exynos 5100 chips.
(Via)
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