The battle for 5G supremacy among cellular service providers seems to receive a shakeup at least once a month, and the latest impact comes from news about Apple.
In a research note obtained by MacRumors Monday morning, TF International Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo said that Apple will release three new smartphones in 2020, and two of them will be 5G-ready.
These would be Apple's first 5G smartphone offering, and a long-awaited answer to Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G that has already been on sale via Verizon and AT&T since this past March.
Kuo's note said that Apple will launch three different iPhone models in 2020—with 6.7-inch, 6.1-inch, and 5.4-inch screen sizes. All three will have OLED screens, like Apple's latest smartphone offerings of the XS Max and XS that launched in September 2018. The 6.7-inch and 5.4-inch models will support 5G, while the 6.1-inch model won't, with Kuo suggesting that Apple will continue its tradition of offering a cheaper model in 2020.
Kuo's note said that the two Apple 5G iPhones will use Qualcomm's 5G modem, following the two companies' settling of their long-standing lawsuit this past April. Kuo also said Apple is building its own 5G chip that will be ready for later iPhones in 2022 or 2023, stating “We believe that the content of Apple and Qualcomm's previous settlement includes Qualcomm's release of partly 5G baseband chip source code to Apple for Apple's development of own 5G PA/FEM."
Apple has released a new iPhone every September since the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012, and Monday's news means that the company's September 2019 release won't support 5G networks.
MacRumors mentioned that Kuo believes that all new iPhones will support 5G starting in 2021.
