Apple Expected to Use Own Modem Chip by 2025, Qualcomm to Face Competition From Huawei: Ming-Chi Kuo

Apple is reportedly expected to use its own 5G modem chip on iPhone models starting in 2025. According to details shared by TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a fairly good track record of predicting Apple hardware development, the company could reduce its reliance on other companies for components, including Qualcomm. The chipmaker is also likely to face competition from Huawei, after the phone manufacturer unveiled new phones with self-developed Kirin 9000S and other Kirin chips that are set to make their way to phones in 2024.

In a Medium post, Kuo predicts that Qualcomm could not only lose Huawei’s orders for chips completely from 2024, but also see a decline in shipments to other Chinese smartphone makers. Last year, the phone maker purchased up to 42 million chips from Qualcomm — the figure was as high as 25 million in 2022, according to the analyst. In order to preserve its market share in China, the company is expected to initiate a price war by Q4 2023, according to Kuo.

Aside from Huawei, Qualcomm will also be impacted by the possibility of Samsung using its own Exynos 2400 chipset on its phones in 2024, Kuo claims. Apple has also been rumoured to use its own modem chip for its iPhone models and this change could take place by 2025, the analyst explains.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has been tipped to switch to a proprietary Apple 5G modem. In April, Haitong International Securities analyst Jeff Pu claimed that the Cupertino company had resumed development of the fourth-generation iPhone SE, which would feature Apple’s purported in-house 5G modem chip.

Earlier this year, Kuo also predicted the arrival of an iPhone SE model next year with a 5G chip developed by the iPhone maker and tweeted that “the significant decline in Qualcomm’s Apple orders in the foreseeable future is a foregone conclusion.”

At the time, the analyst had claimed that the rumoured iPhone SE 4 would arrive in 2024 with Apple’s 5G baseband chip manufactured using a 4nm process. Kuo later updated his prediction to in line with Pu’s claim that the company’s in-house 5G modem could debut on an iPhone in 2025.