Cupertino based giant Apple is planning to join hands with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The joint venture has been planned for producing its own 5G modems for future iPhones. Apple has said that it is planning to use the company’s 4nm process node that has so far not been used for any of the commercial products. As for now the modem is tested and designed at 5nm before the mass production begins in 2023 at 4nm.
With this it has clearly indicated about Apple’s intentions to switch to modems of its own and that is expected to happen by 2023. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is expected to be its natural manufacturing partner. Talking about modems, Qualcomm remains the dominant player in the industry and produces components for modems for the complete iPhone 13 lineup. The company had recently said that it expects to account for just 20 percent of the iPhone modem orders in two years.
Apple had acquired the 5G modem division of Intel in 2019 that had indicated about the switch. Interestingly, earlier in 2019, Apple and Qualcomm had come to an agreement to end an expensive patent dispute that was related to modem technology. Under the agreement, Qualcomm received more than $4 billion in terms of settlement.
Coming back to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, it manufactures all the iPhone A-Series processors along with M1 systems on chip that are meant for the Mac computers. As per reports there are nearly hundreds of engineers from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co based in Cupertino to work on the chip development team of Apple. The 2022 iPhone SoCs are expected to be equipped with the 4nm processors of TSMC. More reports have said that some of the iPad models will be adopting the 3nm processors in 2023. Meanwhile, the iPhone will be making the 3nm surge by as soon as in 2022.
Photo Credits: Esiz news
