The main issue is carrier relationships. Not patents.
The modem is not the hard part, not easy either. But having enough engagement with carriers worldwide to support all the use cases in terms of infrastructure combinations. The validation process for that is extremely expensive. That is one of the value propositions Qualcomm offers to the customers of their chipsets; they basically take care of all that headache for the phone vendor/integrator if they just go with their chipset (android) or modem (apple).
This is why the most successful modem companies (Qualcomm Huawei) either also offer a lot of infrastructure products themselves or have very strong connections with infrastructure manufacturers like Ericsson and Nokia (Samsung, Mediatek).
From the HW perspective, the issue is not the modem itself, but all the supporting chipset specially the antena/RF elements. Which in 5G involve a lot of beam “herding” whose power is hard to scale and are not that easy to manufacture. Also there are lots of thermal issues with those antenna elements.
Apple does not have, currently, the corporate culture for that type of engagement. Because they got a very good technical team from intel, but not the other side of the equation in terms of telco carrier infra engagement.
Because they got a very good technical team from intel, but not the other side of the equation in terms of telco carrier infra engagement.
Even if the carrier-side of things are true (mostly), the Intel-division was everything but stuffed with competence, as they struggled hard on anything wireless mobile/modem. Their 3G were a hot mess, LTE was even worse and drained batteries trice as fast as Qualcomm’s modems (while delivering half the throughput) and no-one wanted the stuff.
Apple went to Intel only to have negotiating-power towards QC and Intel never even came close to anything 5G, despite claiming the exact contrary (outright lying for years and promised Apple jam tomorrow) and with that, bringing Apple in a VERY tough and costy spot towards Qualcomm.
Apple literally had billions to pay for Intel’s feigned competence (read: incompetence), only to crawl back to Qualcomm.
They likely never would’ve engaged in any legal disputes with Qualcomm, if they weren’t assured by Intel they could make some 5G and finally ditch/avoid Qualcomm’s license-fees by sporting Intel-modems.
Intel amassed over $20B of debts on their mobile wireless-division for a reason before ditching it to Apple.
Intel also never made a single cent of profit since their modem-business was outright uncompetitive to begin with when Apple was always their only lone customer and Intel even needed to pay Apple to equip their modems (on LTE that is; Motorola got paid about $380M to equip Intel’s UMTS-modems IIRC on 3G).
So to picture Intel’s Mobile & Wireless-division as IF they’d be even remotely competent as that of Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, HiSilicon, MediaTek and others is giving way too much credit to them to say the least.
Also, that has nothing to do with Infineon. Since when Intel bought it from German Siemens, it was profitable.
It was Intel’s typical in-house incompetence and outrageous impertinent style which made them claim they could do anything modem for the better part of a decade, while constantly failing along the way.
Their infamous toxic work-environment may have been another nail on the coffin though.
Everything I have heard about it is that it is insanely complicated. You have to deal with different radio frequencies and communicating with the right one properly and reliably. I think that Apple thought that since they did an excellent job designing their own chips, that modems would be a cinch but this has proven to not be the case at all.
It’s not that they can’t make a 5G modem, they can, it’s just that it won’t be as good as the Qualcomm modems Apple is already licensing. Qualcomm is the gold standard for modems, and when manufacturers use someone else, like Google’s Pixel using Samsung’s modems, you get tons of complaints about lower battery life/abnormal heat, and poor reception.
The modem they come out with might be good for web surfing but what about what our kids/grandkids will being doing with it when they are our age? We tend to think that today’s wireless technology will be good enough for tomorrows applications. I doubt it and not sure Apple has the wireless chops to keep pace with Qcom
Damn. How hard is to create a 5G modem that both Intel and Apple could not make it work?
It’s very hard analog design
The main issue is carrier relationships. Not patents.
The modem is not the hard part, not easy either. But having enough engagement with carriers worldwide to support all the use cases in terms of infrastructure combinations. The validation process for that is extremely expensive. That is one of the value propositions Qualcomm offers to the customers of their chipsets; they basically take care of all that headache for the phone vendor/integrator if they just go with their chipset (android) or modem (apple).
This is why the most successful modem companies (Qualcomm Huawei) either also offer a lot of infrastructure products themselves or have very strong connections with infrastructure manufacturers like Ericsson and Nokia (Samsung, Mediatek).
From the HW perspective, the issue is not the modem itself, but all the supporting chipset specially the antena/RF elements. Which in 5G involve a lot of beam “herding” whose power is hard to scale and are not that easy to manufacture. Also there are lots of thermal issues with those antenna elements.
Apple does not have, currently, the corporate culture for that type of engagement. Because they got a very good technical team from intel, but not the other side of the equation in terms of telco carrier infra engagement.
Even if the carrier-side of things are true (mostly), the Intel-division was everything but stuffed with competence, as they struggled hard on anything wireless mobile/modem. Their 3G were a hot mess, LTE was even worse and drained batteries trice as fast as Qualcomm’s modems (while delivering half the throughput) and no-one wanted the stuff.
Apple went to Intel only to have negotiating-power towards QC and Intel never even came close to anything 5G, despite claiming the exact contrary (outright lying for years and promised Apple jam tomorrow) and with that, bringing Apple in a VERY tough and costy spot towards Qualcomm.
Apple literally had billions to pay for Intel’s feigned competence (read: incompetence), only to crawl back to Qualcomm. They likely never would’ve engaged in any legal disputes with Qualcomm, if they weren’t assured by Intel they could make some 5G and finally ditch/avoid Qualcomm’s license-fees by sporting Intel-modems.
Intel amassed over $20B of debts on their mobile wireless-division for a reason before ditching it to Apple.
Intel also never made a single cent of profit since their modem-business was outright uncompetitive to begin with when Apple was always their only lone customer and Intel even needed to pay Apple to equip their modems (on LTE that is; Motorola got paid about $380M to equip Intel’s UMTS-modems IIRC on 3G).
So to picture Intel’s Mobile & Wireless-division as IF they’d be even remotely competent as that of Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, HiSilicon, MediaTek and others is giving way too much credit to them to say the least.
Also, that has nothing to do with Infineon. Since when Intel bought it from German Siemens, it was profitable.
It was Intel’s typical in-house incompetence and outrageous impertinent style which made them claim they could do anything modem for the better part of a decade, while constantly failing along the way.
Their infamous toxic work-environment may have been another nail on the coffin though.
Everything I have heard about it is that it is insanely complicated. You have to deal with different radio frequencies and communicating with the right one properly and reliably. I think that Apple thought that since they did an excellent job designing their own chips, that modems would be a cinch but this has proven to not be the case at all.
Speak with qualcomm
It’s not that they can’t make a 5G modem, they can, it’s just that it won’t be as good as the Qualcomm modems Apple is already licensing. Qualcomm is the gold standard for modems, and when manufacturers use someone else, like Google’s Pixel using Samsung’s modems, you get tons of complaints about lower battery life/abnormal heat, and poor reception.
The modem they come out with might be good for web surfing but what about what our kids/grandkids will being doing with it when they are our age? We tend to think that today’s wireless technology will be good enough for tomorrows applications. I doubt it and not sure Apple has the wireless chops to keep pace with Qcom
It has a lot more to do with the modern patent system becoming weponized
But Apple has a cross licensing agreement with Qualcomm