Apple to soon start making its own chips for 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity

Jeet — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 05:48:47 +0000

Apple is among the very few companies that design their own chips and the Cupertino-based technology giant has been making A-series chips for devices like iPhones and iPads.

Last year, the company introduced the M1 chip under Apple Silicon, based on the ARM architecture for its Mac devices. This year, Apple introduced two more such chips — M1 Pro and M1 Max, further boosting the performance.

If the latest report coming from Bloomberg is to be believed, then Apple is planning to open a new office in Southern California with dozens of engineers that are yet to be hired by the company. The job post listing reveals that Apple is looking for people with experience in modem chips and other types of wireless semiconductors.

In the next stage, the company seems to be all set to start designing its own 5G modem chips for the iPhones. For this, Apple spent $1 billion in 2019 by acquiring Intel’s smartphone modem chip business.

The 5G modem chip from Apple is expected to be manufactured by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) which is also manufacturing other chips from the technology giant. Based on the previous reports, Apple’s in-house 5G modem could be launched as soon as 2023.

It is speculated that once Apple starts making its own 5G modem chips, it will start designing its own Wi-Fi chips for which the company is currently dependent on Broadcom and Skyworks Solutions.

While Apple will be reducing its reliance on these vendors that offer chips to the company by making its own versions in-house, it will also be increasing its dependence on TSMC for manufacturing all these chips as Apple doesn’t have manufacturing capabilities. This could backfire because of the geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan as well as China and the United States.

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Apple to soon start making its own chips for 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity