Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple has told its suppliers that it is dropping its plans for a fourth-generation iPhone SE release in 2024.
In a post on Medium today, Kuo said that Apple planned to introduce its first in-house 5G chip in the fourth-generation iPhone SE. Instead, Kuo said it is likely that Apple will continue to rely on Qualcomm for 5G chips in 2024.
2. Due to concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to par with Qualcomm’s, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let the low-end iPhone SE 4 adopt it first, and decide whether to let the iPhone 16 use its baseband chip depending on the development status of iPhone SE 4. However, the cancelation of the iPhone SE 4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive supplier of baseband chips for the 2H24 new iPhone 16 series, which is better than the market consensus that Qualcomm will start losing iPhone orders in 2024.
3. Qualcomm is expected to continue to dominate the global high-end mobile phone RF market in 2023 and 2024 at least, leading to markedly higher profits than its competitors. The company’s strong product mix, which confers competitive advantages, is expected to mitigate the negative impacts of the economic recession and allow Qualcomm to return to solid growth ahead of its competitors once the economy recovers.
iPhone 15 models are expected to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X70 modem, while iPhone 16 models might use the rumored Snapdragon X75 modem.