It's no secret that Apple strives to gain tighter control over its devices by including custom components. However, it appears that the technological highlight has fallen short of its goal. It has been reported that Apple is finally abandoning plans to develop custom 5G modems after failing to do so for some time now.
Apple FAILED to develop 5G modems
A report by "yeux1122" in Naver's blog, citing supply chain sources, says that Apple plans to suspend the development efforts and investments it has so far put into developing an internal 5G modem, which was expected to be included in the upcoming iPhone SE 4 .This ends the possibility that we will ever see an Apple-made 5G modem in iPhones.
Just last week, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman mentioned that Apple will miss its 2025 deadline to replace Qualcomm chips with its internal 5G modems because the project has been delayed again.
Apple has been working on cracking the 5G modem code since 2019. It even bought Intel's modem business for a whopping billion dollars in 2019 to avoid working from scratch. Codenamed "Sinope" internally, the project was expected to come to fruition in 2023, and Apple was expected to launch the iPhone SE 4 in 2024 with the custom 5G modem.
