With a bit of little bit of math and loads of fingers and toes,
Sina Finance (through
WCCFtech) has calculated that Apple bought roughly 176 million 5G modems from Qualcomm for this year. This calculation dovetails with estimates calling for Apple to produce 5G and non-5G iPhone fashions within the neighborhood of 190-200 million units for 2020. On the opposite hand, one other report written by Taiwan’s Appledaily requires Apple to roll out 120 million 5G iPhones this year indicating that the upper figures overestimate actuality. Another chance is that
Apple expects a robust restoration for the
iPhone 12 sequence subsequent year. One different choice is that Apple ordered extra modem chips than they wanted as a result of the corporate plans on utilizing them on some future Apple units. There has been speak about a 5G iPad pill sooner or later and Apple might need ordered sufficient chips for such a tool.
Apple ordered extra 5G modem chips from Qualcomm than anticipated
Each 12-inch wafer that TSMC ships to Qualcomm can yield 2,211 modem chips for Apple; with 80,000 wafers shipped, we will estimate that Apple obtained 176 million 5G modem chips. This tells us that Apple expects to ship 176 million 5G handsets this year. You may recall that Apple and Qualcomm have been the Silicon Valley equal of the Hatfields and McCoys in 2019 with each companies taking one another to courtroom for varied patent infringements. Apple was frantically looking for a supply for 5G modem chips. On April 16th, 2019, simply after Apple concluded its opening assertion in a courtroom battle with Qualcomm, a settlement between the 2 firms was introduced. In return for a big sack of money from Apple (estimated to be $4.5 billion), the chip designer gave Apple a six-year licensing settlement with an choice for an extra two years. The settlement additionally included a provide settlement that covers the acquisition by Apple of Qualcomm’s 5G modem chips. All authorized motion filed by each firms towards the opposite was dropped.
At left, Qualcomm’s mmWave antenna and at proper is Qualcomm’s X55 5G modem chip
In extra information associated to this topic, Qualcomm is now TSMC’s largest buyer for chips made used the 7nm course of node. The course of node relies on the variety of transistors that slot in a sq. mm. TSMC’s 7nm course of node sports activities 96.5 million transistors in that little house in comparison with 171.3 million with the newest 3nm course of node. The bigger the variety of transistors inside a chip, the extra highly effective and power environment friendly it’s. The 7nm course of is used to fabricate the Snapdragon X55 modem chip and the present flagship Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865+ chipsets.