According to a report from last year, it was suggested that Apple’s 5G iPhone might arrive in 2020. However, a report from last week revealed that Apple might miss that deadline and that their 5G iPhone could actually be launched in 2021 instead. This is apparently due to Apple finding it hard to obtain the necessary 5G components.
For iPhone users who are worried that they might have to wait until 2021 to get the 5G iPhone, it seems that they might not have anything to be worried about. According to a report from Fast Company, they have been told by their sources that Intel is actually hard at work developing the 5G chips for Apple, and that they actually have missed several other deadlines in a bid to to ensure development of their 5G chips progress at a steady pace.
Intel has since commented on Fast Company’s report where they say, “As we said in November 2018, Intel plans to support customer device launches in 2020 with its XMM 8160 5G multimode modem.” Based on this comment, it sounds like things are progressing as planned and that a launch of a 5G iPhone in 2020 is still very much in the cards.
As it stands there aren’t that many companies who are producing 5G chips, and with the legal battle that Apple has found themselves in with Qualcomm, clearly using Qualcomm’s tech is out of the question. Samsung themselves have also recently started to mass produce their own 5G chips, so Samsung did seem like a potential alternative.