Foreign media said that Apple is starting preliminary negotiations with the new supplier ASE Technology, which owns ASE and SPYL, on back-end orders for iPhone 5G modem. If everything goes well, Apple will encapsulate the first batch of self-designed 5G modem chips.

It is reported that ASE and SPYL have been Qualcomm’s partners in packaging 5G modem chips for iPhone, and cover the Snapdragon X65 5G modem and radio frequency (modem-RF) systems currently OEMed by Samsung Electronics.

At present, Apple has arranged TSMC, the main partner of chip OEM, to produce most of the new chips to be used on 2023 iPhones. Although the 5nm process is currently being tried, it is likely to shift to a more advanced 4nm process in the future.

Apple and Qualcomm broke out a legal war on patent licensing fees in 2016. In 2019, the two sides reached a settlement and signed a six-year licensing agreement, including a two-year extension and a multi-year chip supply. Although Apple adopts Qualcomm 5G baseband chip, it still decided to develop its own 5G baseband chip and acquire Intel’s 5G baseband chip business in 2019. After acquiring most of Intel’s modem business in 2019, Apple has been actively brewing on chip self-developing for several years to get rid of its long-term dependence on Qualcomm.