Apple Is Making Its Own Modem To Compete With Qualcomm, Report Says (theverge.com) 80
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm, according to several new Apple job listings that task engineers to design and develop a layer 1 cellular PHY chip -- implying that the company is working on actual, physical networking hardware. Two of the job posts are explicitly to hire a pair of cellular modem systems architects, one in Santa Clara and one in San Diego, home of Qualcomm. That's alongside several other job postings Apple has listed in San Diego for RF design engineers. The Information, which spotted the first job posting, cites sources that go a step further, claiming that Apple is not only potentially working to develop its own modem, but is in fact specifically targeting it for use in future iPhones, with the company looking to leave longtime partner Intel behind in favor of its own, in-house solution.
According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.
According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.
Compete? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm
Apple doesn't *compete* with Qualcomm. Apple doesn't sell baseband chipsets and Qualcomm doesn't sell phones. They don't want to use Qualcomm parts anymore.
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>Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to avoid paying Qualcomm or anyone
Fixed
They've never liked their dependency on Qualcomm, and last I heard the "some have good radio, some have shitty service/dropouts even with same bars" was really just a question of whether yours had a qualcomm or intel chip. "Bought it through carrier X (ie verizon)" would influence or outright determine it. This isn't my allegation, just what I heard here, but there's nothing unusual about the story.
Apparently (again, echoing here) they got dragged into the courts for taking their (qualcomm) specs and h
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Samsung can...
Commodore also used to have a habit of buying their suppliers to control the entire supply chain.
Do they though? (Score:4, Informative)
How come Apple goes after the OSX86 community who wants to run Apple's OSX, but not on Apple hardware?
Apple puts in light roadblocks, but nothing serious to anyone that wants to make a Hackintosh. How do they "go after" such people?
For instance, if Apple really wanted to go after Hackitosh users, wouldn't they disallow Mac App Store use (it would be trivial for them to detect - they do not even try)? Yet the Mac App Store works fine on a Hackintosh.
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Apple puts in light roadblocks, but nothing serious to anyone that wants to make a Hackintosh. How do they "go after" such people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There's a big difference between going after a community, and going after a company selling a product which violates your restricted license.
Re: Compete? (Score:1)
I would never believe anything bad about apple
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apple has nothing to worry about. Their rabid fans have no problem paying top dollar for 2nd or even 3rd best.
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Well, you could argue that their modem needs to be competitive with what Qualcomm can produce.
This strategy doesn't always go well for them, if you remember Apple Maps.
No it doesn't. We're talking apple here. Apple does not care about being competitive (look at their hardware). Remember the second class of iPhones with (less capable) Intel modems? As long as it does the job... they'll be happy with it. Still not convinced? Look at their (recent) keyboards. They're shit, but they won't admit it unless (and u
Really puts Apple's cash hoard into perspective (Score:1)
When was the last time an electronics manufacturer was this vertically-integrated? They get any guff from a supplier, they just throw up their hands and say "screw it, we'll roll our own."
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Apple also have a history of being screwed by their suppliers, recall IBM and their promised mobile variant of the G5... Resulted in Apple laptops still using the older G4 chip and falling further and further behind competitors using x86 chips.
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The mobile variant of the G5 existed, it was PaSemi's PA6T. It was incredibly power efficient for the time, after all Apple bought PaSemi for good reasons: patents and a very experienced design team for splitting a processor in literally tens of thousands of power domains. PA6T was a 64 bit dual core PPC and way more integrated than the CoreDuo/Core2Duo: PCI express lanes (24 IIRC) and memory controller on the chip.
It's just that IBM was not interested in designing and fabricating it, but what the relativel
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The PA6T was too little too late, it came out in 2007 by which time Apple had already migrated to x86.
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IBM did that for a reason. Apple screwed both IBM and Motorola (remember them?) when they pulled the plug on the Mac compatible sector. All of a sudden what was supposed to be a really large market will several million units turned into a niche market which could hardly pay for the chip development costs. Eventually Motorola gave up on the desktop market and turned to embedded applications and were later spun out to create Freescale. IBM basically kept the Power architecture server work they were doing befo
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US car brands tried that with raw materials and their car production lines.
The problem with vertical integration for auto manufacturers is that certain parts don't scale unless you build so many of them that you're selling them to other auto manufacturers. Brembo brakes doesn't just machine other people's billets, they mine ore, they refine it, they do their own castings... and they sell brakes to everyone. They are in fact the world's largest producer of brake calipers, though most of them don't say Brembo on them.
If there were only three or four automakers worldwide, it would ma
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People will buy it for looks & bragging rights (Score:1, Troll)
I don't know if it will work well, but it will be cool-looking. Maybe a simple orb that's silver, white, translucent, or pearl-esque. Or maybe Saturn-esque.
Re:Apple Sucks at Hardware Design (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is a massive failure when it comes to designing their own chips.
The are eight generations into their A4 to A12 ARM SoC. It is widely viewed as a big success. By controlling their own design, they can put all customizations on-die thereby cutting component count and reducing PCB size. They can also leave off everything they don't need, thus cutting power consumption.
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If they're advertising for RF design engineers, they are way behind. You can't just roll technology like that out from scratch. It's beyond most 'digital' people to do something that analog very well.
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If they're advertising for RF design engineers, they are way behind.
I doubt if they are planning on having working silicon next week. They have deep pockets, and can afford to invest for the long term.
Even if it takes them a few years, it will pay off big time. Qualcomm has had it too easy for too long. We need more competition.
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Leaving stuff off has zero effect on power consumption. All modern chipsets can completely disable unused parts, it's literally a few transistors to completely cut power and reduce consumption to zero. Also compare battery life of the iPhone to high end Android phones and they are about the same for a similar battery size.
Apple make their own SoCs to differentiate themselves and to make sure that iOS can't be hacked to run on non-Apple hardware without extensive work. It also allows them to get some largely
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Ah yes, that digital electromagnetic radiation. I particular like the 0 waves. They feel round and pleasing on my butthole.
Idiot.
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How the hell is a cellular radio front-end supposed to work without analog signal processing? You have to somehow get the analog signals at the antenna/amplifiers to/from the DSPs somehow. The SCFDMA modulation used for LTE uplink is designed to not required linear power amplifiers - that doesn't mean it doesn't involve analog signals (same is true for GSM's GMSK).
Baudacious! (Score:1)
Apple has always been about brains. Now they are about Baud.
This Baud's for you Apple!
Qualcomm could be in trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
Christmas parties? QC had awesome Christmas parties. Cancelled.
Summer picnics, aimed at the kids of worker bees? Used to be awesome, cancelled.
And neither Ken nor Bill wanted to talk about it, but the whole vibe was more hours for not only less money, but fewer intangibles like a subsidized cafeteria and flex hours not being as flexible.
Some of you may remember John Rogers. President of Comic Con, died a month back. He was my boss. He was 100% a company man, I could not see him leaving QC. His obit never mentioned QC, the impression was he didn't work for them anymore. On the one hand, I get that. He had to be worth millions. On the other hand, he was a company man, loved his job, and I honestly thought he would die filling out my performance review. Combined with everything else I've heard, QC may not be a good place to work anymore.
Oh, did I mention the local newspaper runs an annual Best Places to Work every year? For 20 years QC was on that list. They've been absent for 5-8 years now.
Oh yeah, they've had layoffs for 2-3 years running now.
As an interested observer (I still hold lots of stock) I have to wonder if QC is driving out the 20-30 year folks who know their tech, and not being somewhere younger folks (or older transplants) want to work.
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I can help with that. (Score:5, Funny)
looking for Hayes 300 baud (Score:2)
They're actually hunting down the Hays 300 baud modems with acoustic couplers. There's nothing like the challenge of shoving that into an iPhone form factor. I mean, how engineer are you?
Modem not just a Modem anymore (Score:3)
Why would the POTS modem, that being play old telephone service and modulator demodulator, remain what they are. Seriously one of these in pretty much every house world wide. What else can a modem be, well, router, switch and firewall just for a start. Now typical is file server, coming up web server and even email server and far smarter social media server. The scope for that core family device, taking up similar core roles like the smart TV, will expand and take up a much larger role in the family digital landscape. Apple is making a very smart move and probably started a while ago and is not just making an early announcement, I would guess they are much further along then they are indicated.
In all reality, the broadband modem is probably in need of a name change, to reflect its expanding role.
Re: Modem not just a Modem anymore (Score:2)
lol
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What the fuck? Do you smell burnt toast? Please get help. :(
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They're not talking about fixed broadband "modems" (DOCSIS modems, ADSL/VDSL modems, fibre NTUs, etc.), they're talking about cellular modems. It's the DSP and analog circuitry that goes between the RF amplifiers/antenna and the rest of the phone. There's no way Apple's going into the fixed broadband modem/router business, especially after killing off the AirPort line which is the closest they'd got to that space.
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In all reality, the broadband modem is probably in need of a name change
Why? The only thing that's changed is the number of different modulation techniques that it can modulate and demodulate. Just because they now do 64QAM, and APSK instead of PAM doesn't make them any less modemish.
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