Apple has further extended its licensing agreement with Qualcomm to obtain its Snapdragon modems through March 2027, the latter revealed during its Q1 2024 earnings call. (via MacRumors).
The patent licensing agreement was set to expire next year, but Qualcomm now says that Apple unilaterally chose to extend the deal by two years to March 2027. Both companies also enjoy a modem supply agreement that runs to 2026 which was extended last year.
The development comes amid Apple’s continued work on its in-house 5G modems for the iPhone, albeit with limited success. The company is struggling with various aspects of the project including testing, thermal management, performance, and firmware code it inherited from Intel’s modem division after its acquisition.
Some modem prototypes reportedly don’t even feature the faster mmWave 5G standard. Apple reportedly is still undecided whether it plans to include the standard in addition to sub-6GHz on its first commercial modem, which could debut on the next-generation iPhone SE.
Another hurdle further ahead is the complex testing process. Apple has reportedly been testing prototypes of its modems within current iPhones situated within the company’s offices as well as mobile testing vans that roam around Silicon Valley. In the future, Apple will be required to test and certify its modems with hundreds of carriers around the world, an arduous process that Qualcomm already perfected after decades of experience in the industry.
Today’s news further cements that Apple will still have to rely on Qualcomm’s patents for the foreseeable future even if the former successfully brings its own modems to the market. Internally, Apple had set its sights on commercially offering its in-house modems on iPhones as soon as 2024 or 2025. However, it’s now very likely that these custom modems won’t see the light of day until 2026 at the earliest, barring any future setbacks.
The iPhone 16 lineup is rumored to adopt Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X75 modem with support for 5G Advanced and 5G carrier aggregation, in which multiple sub-6Ghz or mmWave carrier frequencies are combined for even faster download and upload speeds.
