Last updated: January 27, 2023, 6:56 PM IST
Apple wants to use all its components internally
The company faces technical difficulties to develop hardware according to its needs and specifications.
Apple has reportedly halted development of its own Wi-Fi chip “for a while”.
Many investors fear the tech giant’s efforts to develop its own Wi-Fi chip could negatively impact Broadcom’s Wi-Fi chip business, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a blog post Thursday.
The iPhone maker’s earlier development for Wi-Fi solutions was the Wi-Fi only chip and not the Wi-Fi+Bluetooth combination chip.
Making a Wi-Fi + Bluetooth combination chip is more difficult from a design perspective than making a Wi-Fi only chip.
As a result, it would be difficult for the tech giant to replace Broadcom’s combo chips with its own since most of Apple’s products use the combo chip.
“The slowdown in processor upgrades is hurting sales of finished products (such as A16 and M2 series chips),” said Kuo.
According to Kuo, the company has focused most of its integrated circuit (IC) design resources on processor development to ensure that the world’s most advanced 3nm processors can smoothly enter mass production in 2023-2025 and that performance upgrade and power consumption improvement can significantly improve over predecessors.
He also mentioned that in the next two to three years, “Wi-Fi chips will usher in critical Wi-Fi 6E/7 upgrades.”
Therefore, it is riskier for the iPhone maker to use its own Wi-Fi chips “when the industry standard changes significantly”.
It was reported earlier this month that the company was working on a replacement for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip it currently uses from Broadcom, and plans to integrate them into devices by 2025.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and was published from a syndicated news agency feed)
