Kuo: Next 2020 iPhones to have Qualcomm 5G chips

A week after Apple and Qualcomm had their trial in court, Ming-Chi Kuo posted another note on the 2020 iPhone’s cellular chips. Qualcomm w...

A week after Apple and Qualcomm had their trial in court, Ming-Chi Kuo posted another note on the 2020 iPhone’s cellular chips. Qualcomm will most likely produce these new cellular chips for the 2020 iPhone.

To begin with, Kuo said that the cellular chips have 5G connectivity for the iPhone. He also said that Samsung is going to be part of the shipments of the 5G chips. In this way, Apple will be able to diversify its suppliers and minimise risk in improving bargaining power.

Next, the recent note from Kuo says that,

Apple and Qualcomm's end of patent dispute and entrance into a six-year licensing deal implies new 2H20 iPhone models will support 5G; Qualcomm and Samsung are potential 5G baseband chip suppliers: The market was worried that Intel's disappointing 5G baseband chip development might be the most severe uncertainty for the new 2H20 iPhone models' adoption of 5G. But we believe the uncertainty has been removed after Apple and Qualcomm's end of patent dispute and entrance into a six-year licensing deal, and Intel's announcement that it will exit the 5G baseband chip business. We expect Apple will likely adopt 5G baseband chips made by Qualcomm (focus on mmWave markets) and Samsung (focus on Sub-6GHz markets) for lowering supply risk, reducing costs and having better bargaining power.

This implies that Apple will be in a 6 year licensing program with Qualcomm beginning this year, and they’ll start using Qualcomm 5G chips in the iPhone next year. Intel won’t be manufacturing cellular chips for the next iPhones after this year. In addition, the iPhone market is worried about the use of Intel chips in the next iPhone, and they want to go back to using Qualcomm chips.

Thus far, Kuo predicts that iPhone shipments will increase steadily of 195 to 200 million iPhone units sold in 2020, with 70 to 75 million 5G iPhones sold in the following year. 5G should boost the sales of the iPhone, aside from the upgrades that we’ve seen in the last few months of 2019.