- Apple could finally be ready to move away from Qualcomm 5G modems, beginning with the iPhone SE 4.
- The iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max would likely all stick with Qualcomm 5G, at least for this generation.
- But the new iPhone 17 Slim could be Apple’s second handset to experiment with the company’s own 5G solution.
Everyone who’s anyone in mobile tech is making their own chips: Google, Samsung, Apple. And while heavyweights like them love building phones around their own custom processors, giving these companies intimate control over feature sets, power consumption, and more, not everything’s so easy to do yourself. Even as Apple got very good at designing processors, it struggled to pivot that expertise into making its own 5G modems. We’ve long been wondering when iPhones would be ready to take that next step, and a new report suggests it could start happening next year.
We’ve been hearing a lot from noted industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today, and that trend continues now, putting forward the theory that the first two iPhone models with Apple-made 5G modems will debut in 2025.