Dell isn't using Qualcomm's modems. At the heart of the Apple-Qualcomm dispute was the no-license, no-chips policy where Qualcomm won't give you their chips if

Dell isn't using Qualcomm's modems. At the heart of the Apple-Qualcomm dispute was the no-license, no-chips policy where Qualcomm won't give you their chips if you don't agree to their license terms. If you want FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) license terms, you don't get Qualcomm's modems. Apple needs Qualcomm's modems for their phones. Dell doesn't have a phone business so they can just use the Intel modems. As an aside, it does look like the laptops which have the modem as an option are $2,000+ for a laptop inferior to what Apple sells for $1,800 (slower processor, less hard drive space, same RAM, garbage 250 nit display). It's always hard to tease apart enterprise deals since everything is negotiable. Maybe Apple struck a deal with Qualcomm that they'd agree to no-license/no-chips for the iPhone and iPad, but it excluded other categories like laptops. We simply don't know. LTE/5G laptops are a small segment and data plans are still very expensive. Maybe a few people have gotten a nice unlimited deal, but carriers generally don't want people using lots of data at this point in time. Consumers generally don't want to be spending another monthly fee on their laptop either. It's a bit of a niche market at present. Maybe Apple is hoping to grow it out of a niche if they're able to do it cheaply. Maybe carriers are telling Apple that they are feeling confident about their network capacity in 2028 so it makes the most sense to launch then. If Apple is launching a 5G laptop, they are going to want to do it with carrier partners who have an easy plan ready for consumers. If that plan is "50GB for $50/mo and then you're throttled to an unusable speed," that isn't something that Apple is going to want to promote to their users. If we're talking about 2028, carriers might feel differently about their network capacity. Companies like Dell often target niches that Apple doesn't target. Apple creates a select few high-volume configurations. Right now, few people want a cellular modem in their laptop.