Apple has reportedly halted the development of its in-house Wi-Fi chip “for a while”.
Many investors are worried that the tech giant’s efforts to develop its own Wi-Fi chip might negatively impact Broadcom’s Wi-Fi chip business, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
The iPhone maker’s previous development for Wi-Fi solution was the Wi-Fi-only chip and not the Wi-Fi+Bluetooth combo chip.
Making a Wi-Fi+Bluetooth combination chip is more difficult than making a Wi-Fi-only chip from a design perspective.
As a result, it would be difficult for the tech giant to replace Broadcom’s combo chips with its own because the majority of Apple’s products employ the combo chip.
“The slowdown of processor upgrades is unfavorable to the sales of end products (such as A16 and M2 series chips),” Kuo said.
According to Kuo, the company has focused the majority of its integrated circuit (IC) design resources on the development of processors to make sure that the world’s most advanced 3nm processors can enter mass production smoothly in 2023-2025 and that the performance upgrade and power consumption improvement can significantly improve against predecessors.
He also mentioned that in the next two-three years, “Wi-Fi chips will usher in critical Wi-Fi 6E/7 upgrades.”
Therefore, it is riskier for the iPhone maker to use its own Wi-Fi chips “when the industry standard markedly changes”.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the company was working on a replacement for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip that it currently uses from Broadcom, and is planning to start integrating it into devices in 2025.
