Apple has said it was open to sourcing its 4G modem requirements from Qualcomm in spite of their ongoing legal tussle though the chipmaker refused to comply with Apple’s requests. The revelation was made by the chief operating officer at Apple, Jeff Williams in his testimony to the US Federal Trade Commission.
Apple said the most current requirement for modems were meant for fitment on the iPhone XS, XS Max and the XR. Qualcomm’s refusal to supply chips to Apple resulted in the iPhone maker to depend entirely on Intel for its modems.
Earlier, Apple would distribute its chip requirements between both Apple and Intel though that also needed some behind the scene work to ensure parity in the manner all iPhone devices eventually performed.
Much of that has to do with the fact that Intel modems are slower than those of Qualcomm. As such, Apple is forced to cap the speed of Qualcomm modems to make those perform at par with Intel modems.
Naturally, Apple is spared all such efforts now that it is exclusively on Intel modems.
What is interesting though is that Williams revelation quite belies earlier held notions that Apple has unilaterally decided against using Qualcomm modems for its latest crop of iPhones. Apple, however, is still using Qualcomm chips on its older iPhone models.
Meanwhile, the legal battle between the two giants continues unabated with Qualcomm having drawn first blood. The chipmakers managed to secure a sales ban on older iPhone devices in both China and Germany. Apple had to issue a software update as a means to work around the ban while it still is exploring other options to prevent it from selling the older iPhone devices from its official sales outlets.
So far, there is no court order anywhere in the world that prevents Apple from selling the latest iPhone XR, XS and XS Max models though unfortunately for the company, the latest models aren’t believed to be selling in numbers it might have hopes for. The company has also revised its sales target while also downgraded its production target twice to match with current demand levels.
