Apple’s home-grown 5G baseband revealed: 3nm process

Apple's in-house chips are becoming increasingly popular, and the company is looking to break with Qualcomm and Huawei on baseband.

According to the latest supply chain news, Apple's in-house 5G baseband chip, codenamed Ibiza, will use TSMC's 3nm process and the supporting RF IC will use TSMC's 7nm process.

According to the news, Apple's 5G baseband is expected to be introduced in the iPhone 16 series of handsets to be launched in 2024, and TSMC will start trial production for Apple in the second half of this year at the earliest, gradually increasing the amount of chips to be invested in the first half of next year.

Former Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon had hinted that Apple could use its own 5G baseband chip in the iPhone 16 series.

Supply chain sources also said that Apple has also started the iPhone SE4 development programme, which can be seen as a smaller version of the iPhone 14, with a 6.1-inch OLED screen and an in-house 5G baseband.

Mobile phone basebands have always been very poorly made, as they have to be tuned to the performance of global carriers, and NV has previously left the industry as a result, so with Apple next to use its own baseband, the iPhone's signal performance will hopefully improve.