Apple is in a battle to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers by taking component manufacturing in-house. Just as it did with its A-series mobile chipsets and M-series SoCs, Cupertino is rumored to bring wireless chips, 5G modems and even display manufacturing to its iPhones, Apple Watches and Macs in-house.
The latest semiconductor research from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that Apple will scale back on the development of its Wi-Fi chip and continue to rely on Broadcom as its key supplier. Apple uses most of its IC design resources for chipset development. Kuo also mentions that Apple is still prioritizing its 5G modem development over the Wi-Fi chip project.
Apple is likely to switch to Wi-Fi 6E in its upcoming iPhone 15 models and the rest of its product portfolio. Kuo confirmed that Apple’s combined Wi-Fi + Bluetooth chip is still in the works. Mark Gurman also confirmed that Apple is still working on the Wi-Fi + Bluetooth combo chip.
