Stefan Mileschin

Will make 5G iPhone and end uncertainty

The surprising development and announcement that Qualcomm and Apple have settled at the right time one of the nastiest boxing matches has begun in front of the San Diego court. Intel announced that it would exit the 5G smartphone modem dream while Qualcomm stepped in.

In a separate piece, we have addressed that Intel didn’t meet the Apple deadline and therefore could not hit the 2020 iPhone production schedule. Intel has evaluated whether it wants to stay in modem business as it failed to make money with it for years now and decided to drop the 5G smartphone development and walk away.

Qualcomm X55 modem aimed at Apple
To step back a bit. Back at Mobile World Congress, shortly after the Snapdragon X55 announcement, I noticed that the product fits the Apple iPhone portfolio like a glove. Traditionally Apple would be the primary customer to buy a custom modem until last year.

Talking to some Qualcomm executives, we realised that the X55 looks like something that Apple would want. Naturally, there wasn’t a comment on that, but we figured we were on the right track. Qualcomm was confident that Apple would settle and come back, and this was always the feeling we got spending some time in chats with Qualcomm.

Lawyers had to put on a farce and blame each other, as each side wanted to win and with the settlement, this is behind us. Our initial analysis was always that they would settle as every single time two tech giants fight, it ends in a settlement. One can split hairs and try to prove who got the better end of the bargain, but again 2 USD EPS or even billions of dollars in back payments are less relevant than long term stability for both.

The Snapdragon X55 modem
The Snapdragon X55 is a single-chip multi-mode modem designed to allow OEMs to build 5G multimode devices. Sooner rather than later Snapdragon will get a 5G modem integrated but this is 2021 at the earliest as the initial customers will be OK with a two-chip solution, and 4G customers won’t like to pay the premium for 5G that early.

There will be a successor of X55 most likely announced in early 2020, but from where we stand, the variation of X55 will end up in the iPhone. Media speculates Samsung as a second source for 5G, but this is something that we have to see. Even Samsung uses Qualcomm for its first generation 5G phones that are about to start shipping in May /June 2019.

https://fudzilla.com/news/mobile/485...apple-analysis