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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

Apple currently buys 4G modems from Intel and presumably Apple is shopping for 5G modems. If Intel no longer makes 5G modems then Apple needs to buy them from Qualcomm. Or it could be the reverse: if Apple has decided to buy 5G modems from Qualcomm then Intel has no customers for its 5G modems and thus decided to cancel them.

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It is not like Qualcomm settles with Apple to get into Apple's cellphones, it is a concession made to make them drop Intel and still pay them royalties after Apple finishes its own modem.

Apple been poaching Qualcomm's top radio engineers for years ...for work in their Chinese RnD centre (no non-compete enforcement there)

Non-competes are not enforced in California.

Well, they might be other reasons then. You don't normally haul a poached top tier employee from a first world country to China.

My speculation is maybe their talks with Huawei were more fruitful than known to the public.

Maybe soon Apple could drop the "Designed in California", and just go 100% "Made in PRC".

True story: I was born in a opressive communist dictatorship, escaped with my family to freedom and democracy. It's very hard to observe the vanguard of democratic capitalism, become 99% communist, with a couple guys in California rounding the corners and painting the boxes...

Wouldn't it be suicide for a pro-privacy company to put Huawei gear in it's phones? Normally I would figure consumers just aren't that privacy-conscious, but with the current national security climate around Huawei, I think many more people are aware of the massive risks they pose.

To begin with, work on physical layer of 5G NR is to big extend Huawei's and ZTE's effort as part of 3gpp

Who will be your first option for supplier of 5G PHY chips other than standard's original authors?

Qualcomm, I suppose. I personally think it's more likely that Apple wants to make its own. One thing it does do well is custom fabrication and optimization, which is why iPhones run better with less RAM than Androids and can have good battery life. I think they may be sick of the trouble caused by 3rd-party suppliers in this department.

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