7 ms·

Apple Is Building Its Own Modem, Plays Long Game in Dropping Qualcomm

37 points by jnord 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
It's hard to believe Apple did not look at the BOM from day one as a future internalised profit moment. After all it's what they did with Wolfson chips in the iPod: used them until they understood how to replace them and then dropped them. Qualcomm is hardly cheap, but per-phone it's also hardly expensive. At one remove, this is a fight between two dogs with no up or downside for me as a consumer because in all likelihood Apple will keep prices high: It's seeking to reduce cost, not price. If somebody has evidence the cost of Qualcomm IPR has influenced Apple pricing and we can expect a price drop, I'd love to understand it. Moving upstream, is Apple going to take over the Qualcomm research function and start owning the IPR behind encoding and RF technology? Wouldn't buying qualcomm have achieved the same outcome? Buying their IPR wholesale instead of retail? Thats what Google did with Motorola: bought the entire box, kept the three pokemon cards it liked (the retained IPR, a small amount), and sold the rest to Lenovo.
- xyzzy123 2y ago
  Re: research I was under the impression IP licensing was a major issue with cellular modem development (i.e, the "patent minefield"), I wonder how they are navigating this.
  - dartos 2y ago
    The budget for the legal team is probably larger than the gdp of most countries
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  I’ll just have a guess and say there’s zero chance Apple will cut prices. They want to lower costs but I’m sure they’ll also use this as an excuse to increase prices justified by all the investments.
- NotMichaelBay 2y ago
  I would consider it a downside to consumers if there are no savings or benefits passed on; they are paying in opportunity cost. I'm assuming there are other efforts that would be beneficial to consumers that Apple is not spending time on.
  - Pet_Ant 2y ago
    I assume the point of Apple owning their own modem is not just not to pay Qualcomm, but also to integrate more deeply. I’m betting that they’ll be able to integrate it with their CPU and perhaps reuse the ALU so that there is efficiency there and maybe a boost in battery life or a thinner device.
  - saurik 2y ago
    FWIW, if Apple wanted to maximize long-term benefit (not saying they are, but also am not wanting to say they aren't), even if there were no benefit from doing this (which I actually doubt) and even if there were no price reduction, they would still get around to doing this action as it would let them invest more money later into engineers that work on things they care about, as opposed to things Qualcomm cares about, and hopefully/maybe that correlates with things you/I care about.
- someguydave 2y ago
  I suspect Apple wants to enable proprietary wireless features and they don’t want to involve Qualcomm in their IP
  - jorvi 2y ago
    Apple can’t. Qualcomm’s special area of expertise is in cellular, not WiFi. And cellular is specced and regulated to the extreme. There’s nothing extra Apple can do that Qualcomm isn’t. They can optimize, but they can’t revolutionize.
    - someguydave 2y ago
      All true but there is more to RF than correctly implementing cellular comms
    - piltdownman 2y ago
      NTN 3GPP Specs are only now being properly evaluated and set, with Ericsson/Qualcomm/Thales partnering to POC the tech on a 5 year roadmap. In the interim, a number of companies like Apple and Samsung are now offering Satellite based SOS Emergency Text services as a commercial reality, presumably straining the capabilities of the current modems to their capacity. Cellular is specced and regulated to the extreme between the FCC/3GPP Standards, but working within those constraints you already have two viable D2D Satellite 4G companies rolling out commercial services for unmodified cellular devices - ASTS and Lynk - with Lynk already offering commercial services. They could well be optimizing and revolutionizing in one go - particularly to support new paradigm shifts in the US Market Service provisionment. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529554741/en/AST-SpaceMobile-and-Verizon-Announce-Plans-to-Target-100-Percent-Geographical-Coverage-of-the-Continental-United-States-from-Space-on-Premium-850-MHz-Cellular-Spectrum https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529554741/en/AST...
      - someguydave 2y ago
        Indeed, not to mention they could also optimize their bluetooth & wifi integration with cellular and space comms plus customized array processing. I also suspect Apple is working on other proprietary personal wireless systems
The_Colonel 2y ago
Connectivity seems like a tough nut to crack. There are many protocols out there which need to be supported, secret sauces gained by many years of experience, working around bugs of many specific devices etc. It's not about having one awesome design, it's about testing with many different devices across many different environments etc. This project seems expensive, risky, with unclear benefits.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Apple being apple, they can simply support some newer modern standards and declare the rest unsupported. Mobile networks will be forced to update because no mobile network would survive an iPhone not being able to connect.
  - katbyte 2y ago
    They can also keep throwing money at it until it’s solved
  - avidiax 2y ago
    Apple has this sort of advantage in numerous standards. Everyone tests their Bluetooth & WiFi against Apple, and iterates until it works perfectly. So this means that Apple effectively gets the right to interpret standards in the way they want, and implement the subset of optional features that they want, and the rest of the industry will conform to them. And if something doesn't work, the user is unlikely to blame Apple. They always blame the other guy. So Apple seems to be one of the only companies that could plausibly homegrow a 5G modem, picking and choosing the parts of the protocol that they want to implement, and perhaps supporting only 5G instead of all the legacy protocols as a sort of "brave" stance. At the very least, their development of such a program could induce their chip vendors to give a price break.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Notable that apple did their "esim is the only option" in the USA, but in other countries they were forced to include a SIM slot because they couldn't force mobile networks to support esims. And esims are just a software/provisioning change for most mobile networks. Yet apple couldn't force it to happen. Even now, 5 years on, esims aren't supported on most mobile networks outside the USA and many models of phone don't support them.
vr-wannabe 2y ago
I can't seem to read the article, even with the archive.ph (it seems bloomberg can block it now).
kotaKat 2y ago
But is Qualcomm going to let them have access to the Globalstar constellation or band n53 licensing without a Qualcomm modem?
- someguydave 2y ago
  Why couldn’t Apple negotiate directly with Globalstar?
eigenspace 2y ago
My understanding was that it had been widely reported for years and years now that Apple has repeatedly attempted to make their own Modem, and then it fails, and they go back to signing another contract with Qualcomm. IIRC they did this as recently as last year. (Sorry if the article goes into this, I got paywalled)

37 points by jnord 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

It's hard to believe Apple did not look at the BOM from day one as a future internalised profit moment. After all it's what they did with Wolfson chips in the iPod: used them until they understood how to replace them and then dropped them. Qualcomm is hardly cheap, but per-phone it's also hardly expensive. At one remove, this is a fight between two dogs with no up or downside for me as a consumer because in all likelihood Apple will keep prices high: It's seeking to reduce cost, not price. If somebody has evidence the cost of Qualcomm IPR has influenced Apple pricing and we can expect a price drop, I'd love to understand it. Moving upstream, is Apple going to take over the Qualcomm research function and start owning the IPR behind encoding and RF technology? Wouldn't buying qualcomm have achieved the same outcome? Buying their IPR wholesale instead of retail? Thats what Google did with Motorola: bought the entire box, kept the three pokemon cards it liked (the retained IPR, a small amount), and sold the rest to Lenovo.

xyzzy123 2y ago
Re: research I was under the impression IP licensing was a major issue with cellular modem development (i.e, the "patent minefield"), I wonder how they are navigating this.
- dartos 2y ago
  The budget for the legal team is probably larger than the gdp of most countries
manuelmoreale 2y ago
I’ll just have a guess and say there’s zero chance Apple will cut prices. They want to lower costs but I’m sure they’ll also use this as an excuse to increase prices justified by all the investments.
NotMichaelBay 2y ago
I would consider it a downside to consumers if there are no savings or benefits passed on; they are paying in opportunity cost. I'm assuming there are other efforts that would be beneficial to consumers that Apple is not spending time on.
- Pet_Ant 2y ago
  I assume the point of Apple owning their own modem is not just not to pay Qualcomm, but also to integrate more deeply. I’m betting that they’ll be able to integrate it with their CPU and perhaps reuse the ALU so that there is efficiency there and maybe a boost in battery life or a thinner device.
- saurik 2y ago
  FWIW, if Apple wanted to maximize long-term benefit (not saying they are, but also am not wanting to say they aren't), even if there were no benefit from doing this (which I actually doubt) and even if there were no price reduction, they would still get around to doing this action as it would let them invest more money later into engineers that work on things they care about, as opposed to things Qualcomm cares about, and hopefully/maybe that correlates with things you/I care about.
someguydave 2y ago
I suspect Apple wants to enable proprietary wireless features and they don’t want to involve Qualcomm in their IP
- jorvi 2y ago
  Apple can’t. Qualcomm’s special area of expertise is in cellular, not WiFi. And cellular is specced and regulated to the extreme. There’s nothing extra Apple can do that Qualcomm isn’t. They can optimize, but they can’t revolutionize.
  - someguydave 2y ago
    All true but there is more to RF than correctly implementing cellular comms
  - piltdownman 2y ago
    NTN 3GPP Specs are only now being properly evaluated and set, with Ericsson/Qualcomm/Thales partnering to POC the tech on a 5 year roadmap. In the interim, a number of companies like Apple and Samsung are now offering Satellite based SOS Emergency Text services as a commercial reality, presumably straining the capabilities of the current modems to their capacity. Cellular is specced and regulated to the extreme between the FCC/3GPP Standards, but working within those constraints you already have two viable D2D Satellite 4G companies rolling out commercial services for unmodified cellular devices - ASTS and Lynk - with Lynk already offering commercial services. They could well be optimizing and revolutionizing in one go - particularly to support new paradigm shifts in the US Market Service provisionment. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529554741/en/AST-SpaceMobile-and-Verizon-Announce-Plans-to-Target-100-Percent-Geographical-Coverage-of-the-Continental-United-States-from-Space-on-Premium-850-MHz-Cellular-Spectrum https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240529554741/en/AST...
    - someguydave 2y ago
      Indeed, not to mention they could also optimize their bluetooth & wifi integration with cellular and space comms plus customized array processing. I also suspect Apple is working on other proprietary personal wireless systems

The_Colonel 2y ago

Connectivity seems like a tough nut to crack. There are many protocols out there which need to be supported, secret sauces gained by many years of experience, working around bugs of many specific devices etc. It's not about having one awesome design, it's about testing with many different devices across many different environments etc. This project seems expensive, risky, with unclear benefits.

londons_explore 2y ago
Apple being apple, they can simply support some newer modern standards and declare the rest unsupported. Mobile networks will be forced to update because no mobile network would survive an iPhone not being able to connect.
- katbyte 2y ago
  They can also keep throwing money at it until it’s solved
- avidiax 2y ago
  Apple has this sort of advantage in numerous standards. Everyone tests their Bluetooth & WiFi against Apple, and iterates until it works perfectly. So this means that Apple effectively gets the right to interpret standards in the way they want, and implement the subset of optional features that they want, and the rest of the industry will conform to them. And if something doesn't work, the user is unlikely to blame Apple. They always blame the other guy. So Apple seems to be one of the only companies that could plausibly homegrow a 5G modem, picking and choosing the parts of the protocol that they want to implement, and perhaps supporting only 5G instead of all the legacy protocols as a sort of "brave" stance. At the very least, their development of such a program could induce their chip vendors to give a price break.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Notable that apple did their "esim is the only option" in the USA, but in other countries they were forced to include a SIM slot because they couldn't force mobile networks to support esims. And esims are just a software/provisioning change for most mobile networks. Yet apple couldn't force it to happen. Even now, 5 years on, esims aren't supported on most mobile networks outside the USA and many models of phone don't support them.

vr-wannabe 2y ago

I can't seem to read the article, even with the archive.ph (it seems bloomberg can block it now).

kotaKat 2y ago

But is Qualcomm going to let them have access to the Globalstar constellation or band n53 licensing without a Qualcomm modem?

someguydave 2y ago
Why couldn’t Apple negotiate directly with Globalstar?

eigenspace 2y ago

My understanding was that it had been widely reported for years and years now that Apple has repeatedly attempted to make their own Modem, and then it fails, and they go back to signing another contract with Qualcomm. IIRC they did this as recently as last year. (Sorry if the article goes into this, I got paywalled)