Ming-Chi Kuo: The next major upgrade to iPhone 5G is expected to arrive in 2023

On May 10, according to media reports, mobile analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the iPhone's custom 5G modem will begin to appear in 2023.

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This means Apple will no longer be dependent on components currently sourced from Qualcomm. The iPhone 12 series phones are the first 5G-capable phones from Apple, so the 2023 update could be the first to see a major boost in 5G performance.

The news won’t come as a surprise to seasoned industry watchers, though the timing of the prediction is interesting. Ever since Apple acquired Intel’s modem chip business in 2019, it’s been clear that development of 5G technology would ultimately be done in-house at Apple.

There have been previous predictions that an Apple phone with an Apple-made 5G modem could arrive in 2022, but Kuo believes that now seems a bit optimistic. Such a chip will appear in 2023 at the earliest, so it may be later.

Apple has been putting its own custom chips in iPhones for more than a decade, and the company has recently begun doing the same with its computing business to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers, allowing every part of the hardware and software setup to be tightly integrated and fully optimized for performance and efficiency.