It’s been rumored since 2020 that Apple has been developing its own chip for future iPhones. This owing to information shared by Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies, Johny Srouji, (via Bloomberg), at a town hall meeting with Apple employees, where he said: "This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition." However, now a new rumor has surfaced saying we can’t expect the Apple chip to debut until at least 2025 and Qualcomm is predicted to remain the supplier of modems for all iPhone 15(opens in new tab) and iPhone 16 models instead.
Via MacRumors(opens in new tab), we have intel shared by Haitong International Securities analyst Jeff Pu, in a research note on Friday, which says he expects iPhone models released in 2024 to use Qualcomm's as-yet-unannounced Snapdragon X75 modem. This chip. like the Snapdragon X70, is expected to be manufactured based on TSMC's 4nm process, contributing to power efficiency improvements.
This new intel matches up with the information shared by Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo back in the summer, saying that “Apple's own iPhone 5G modem chip development may have failed” and that consequently, Qualcomm would remain the exclusive supplier of 5G modems for new iPhone models in 2023. What Kuo didn’t provide was a timeframe for Apple would use their own chip in iPhones, but now thanks to Pu we know we could be looking at 2025.