Apple reportedly abandons its 5G modem development

Apple has been developing a 5G modem in-house for years after acquiring Intel’s modem business. The modem has seen quite a few delays, with the recent one being pushed back to late 2025 or early 2026. However, it appears that Apple is ready to bury its plans to have a 5G modem and may instead abandon the project altogether.

The information comes from the South Korean platform Naver, according to which Apple is restructuring the investments made in the development of the modem and the workforce it has hired over the course of a few years. The same update was later corroborated by tipster @Tech_Reve, implying that this is reliable information that puts Apple’s 5G modems in the grave.

Developing modems is difficult, even for a company with a market cap of $2.95 trillion. Qualcomm is currently leading with its 5G modems and has partnered with Apple to offer modem deals through 2026, per the latest agreement. Several reports suggest that Qualcomm’s deal with Apple was presented as the reason why the latter would delay its own 5G modems, the recent development in the story sheds light on why these delays happened in the first place. The deal was reached after Apple and Qualcomm had legal issues over patents used in its modem that are set to expire in 2030.

Naver also mentioned that Apple failed to integrate its 5G modems into the fourth-generation iPhone SE (SE4), which was also repeatedly delayed. No future iPhones will have Apple’s in-house 5G modems yet, unless the Cupertino giant makes other plans, which is highly unlikely at this stage.

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