Earlier this month, it was rumored that Apple might not be launching their 5G iPhone until 2021 due to the difficulty of sourcing components. This stemmed from the fact that Qualcomm is currently one of the biggest suppliers, but due to their legal troubles, Apple was clearly avoiding trying to source from them.
That changed later when it was revealed that Apple and Qualcomm had reached a settlement agreement and that it was more than likely that Qualcomm would now start to supply Apple with 5G modems. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen, but a report from CNBC quotes top Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who “confirms” that the company’s 5G iPhone is indeed on track for a launch in 2020.
According to Kuo, it appears that not only will Apple source from Qualcomm, but also Samsung (whom the company had also previously tangoed with in a legendary lawsuit many years ago). “We expect Apple will likely adopt 5G baseband chips made by Qualcomm (focus on mmWave markets) and Samsung (focus on Sub-6GHz markets) for lowering supply risk, reducing costs and having better bargaining power.”
It remains to be seen if these rumors pan out, but basically, if you were hoping to see a 5G iPhone this year, you’d probably be best not to get your hopes up, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing as we imagine that a good bulk of 2019 will probably be spent sorting out issues that 5G might have.
Filed in . Read more about 5G, iPhone, Qualcomm and Samsung. Source: cnbc