So here it is; Apple’s first in-house cellular modem. Debuted in the low-stakes iPhone 16e, the replacement to the SE line, the modem is the culmination of Intel’s disastrous attempt to attack Qualcomm’s leadership in the RF realm. Apple bailed Intel out, paying $1 billion for those distressed assets, and hopes to find value in cheaper components and technological independence.
Crucially, Apple will reportedly stop using Qualcomm modems in 2026. Apple is Qualcomm’s largest customer, at around 20% of its annual revenues, meaning that there is a pressing need for Qualcomm to diversify. The iPhone 16e gives Apple a low-stakes debut, as if it does not have stellar performance, it can deflect these criticisms by pointing to its $600 price tag. All insights gleaned from this launch can then be used to improve the design – helping Apple move further from Qualcomm.
Notably, the C1 does not support WiFi 7, nor mmWave 5G. This will be because of the antenna design decisions, which evidently must improve before Apple brings its own 5G implementations to its flagship handsets.
One would hope that the C1 modem performs well, and that Apple is not so obstinate that it would bring a problematic product to market. If the C1 is a long-term problem, Apple could pursue Samsung or MediaTek for alternatives too. Broadcom will be uncomfortable too, as its WiFi and Bluetooth combo chipsets are presumably next on the chopping block.
For Qualcomm, MediaTek has been the bigger thorn in its side – catching up and sometimes surpassing it on new additions, especially on the video decoding side. Qualcomm’s own attempts to loosen the grip that Arm holds on it led to that recent legal showdown, which Qualcomm won on a mistrial ruling, so Qualcomm understands Apple’s motivations.
But last time we saw an Intel vs. Qualcomm showdown in the iPhone, Qualcomm was crowned absolutely victorious – struggling to contain its laughter, as reviewers discovered the scale of the performance difference between iPhone units with Intel modems and the traditional Qualcomm approach.
Modem History
Apple and Qualcomm have been locked in various legal disputes, which have rather soured the working relationship. Qualcomm has long battled anticompetitive allegations, relating to its potential monopoly power.
Apple has longed for silicon independence for years. Its first in-house SoC was the Apple A4, which debuted in the iPhone 4, in 2010. The M1 processor brought the same ARM-based independence to Apple’s PCs in 2020. For the iPhone, Apple’s decision to use an in-house GPU design led to the collapse of Imagination Technologies, and it also acquired the power management assets of Dialog Semiconductor for $600 million in 2018.
Intel unveiled its 5G modem at CES 2017. For Intel, the modem was a second bite at the apple, as it had failed to capture any share of the main processor market in mobile. At the end of that month, Apple sued Qualcomm, filing suit in multiple countries. This included a ruling on the standards essential patents (SEP) licensing deals that Apple felt it was forced to make with an abusive Qualcomm.
Qualcomm countered in April 2017, was hit with a $744 million fine in Taiwan in October, and saw its results hampered by the Apple turmoil and its failure to acquire NXP Semiconductors. The initial suit rumbled on, disclosing that Qualcomm had paid Apple $1 billion to move away from Infineon to exclusively purchase Qualcomm modems, as well as the ‘no license, no chips’ policy.
In April 2019, Apple ended all ongoing litigation with Qualcomm. The settlement included an undisclosed payment from Apple to Qualcomm, and crucially a six-year license agreement with a two-year extension option for modems. This means that the Qualcomm supply line could end as soon as this year, but potentially run until 2027.
However, the legal headaches were not over for Qualcomm. In May 2019, Qualcomm was ruled a monopoly, but this was later overturned on appeal, in November 2020, after the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that the FTC had failed to prove sufficient consumer harm from Qualcomm’s practices. Today, that case could have a very different outcome.
In July 2019, Apple bought Intel’s modem assets, but had been backed into a corner – essentially forced to use Qualcomm’s 5G modems. Intel’s failure to create a suitable 5G modem, after making reasonable 4G modems, put Apple into a painful position, and it was clear that Apple wanted out of this single-vendor headache.
Apple first sourced modems from Intel in the iPhone 7, in 2016 – ending a five-year period where Qualcomm was the sole provider. Cellular Insights testing showed that Qualcomm was overall some 30% better than Intel, and up to 75% better in low signal strength environments.
In 2017, the iPhone X (don’t start) debuted, using Intel modems (XMM 7480) for AT&T and T-Mobile, and Qualcomm modems (MDM9655 Snapdragon X16 LTE) for Verizon and Sprint. Additional testing found that Qualcomm was up to 67% better than Intel below -125 dBm, in those low-signal environments, and while Intel had improved, the difference was still stark.
In strong-signal environments, the difference between the two was essentially impossible for a user to perceive. However, when it really counts, in those low-signal environments, the effective difference was enormous – between being online and not.
The iPhone 12 was the first 5G-capable Apple phone, and was unveiled in 2020. This marked the return to Qualcomm exclusivity, for Apple. Since then, and since buying the Intel assets, Apple has been racing to divorce itself from Qualcomm, but has notably never entertained the idea of using MediaTek.
Device Specifics
The iPhone 16e, likely the start of a trend of having a lower-cost ‘e’ variant for each new generation, houses the new Apple Intelligence features. It uses the same A18 SoC as the higher-spec variants, includes eSIM functionality, and also has the Globalstar-provided satellite connectivity feature – free for two years, apparently.
The 6.1-inch formfactor removes the home button – a staple of the old SE range. It has Face ID (unlike the SE), and its single physical camera has been upgraded to provide much better photo capture capabilities than the old SE – but still behind the flagship iPhone 16. The base storage level is 128 GB, and it features 8 GB of RAM.
Apple continues its tradition of rinsing users on storage upgrades, however. To increase to 256 GB costs an additional $100 (or €, or £), and 512 GB of storage will cost $899. The component costs of 512 GB chips these days can be below $40, in small volumes, and substantially below this at the sort of volumes that Apple purchases at. This is, of course, a way to push people towards buying more expensive Apple products (as this dynamic happens across the board), and ideally purchasing an iCloud subscription too.
Notably, it lacks Apple’s MagSafe support, but does feature a lower-spec wireless charging interface – based on Qi. USB-C replaces the Lightning port of the iPhone SE too. It supports the new-ish AV1 codec for video playback, alongside HEVC and AVC, as well as Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and HLG for HDR playback. An OLED screen provides a peak brightness of 1,200 nits, but the 60 Hz refresh rate is notably slow, compared to the Android competition at this price point.