Intel Corp executives said on Friday that the devices carrying Intel’s 5G modem chips are likely to be appearing in market but not before 2020.
The announcement by Intel’s head of networking chip business, Sandra Rivera, at media event in Palo Alto, California that Intel will be providing its customers with sample of 5G modem chips in this year but 5G products from customers are not expected to be coming before 2020, also rose the possibility of Apple’s 5G device to be unavailable till 2020, increasing its gap with rival for more than a year which are launching 5G devices this year.
Rivera, though, confirmed the availability of Intel’s 5G modem chips as well as non-consumer 5G products like networking gears later this year but did not hinted any time line for 5G devices available to the consumers.
It was also not clear that the timing described by the Intel on its modem chips will also cause the delay for Apple to launch its 5G devices in 2019, but earlier in a report, Bloomberg has revealed that Apple’s 5G devices would not be ready before 2020.
For early 5G iPhone to be released this year, Apple remained in talks with Samsung and MediaTek for 5G modem chips, but conclusion of those talks is still not known.
Apple’s early this year move to shift its modem engineering unit, which was previously the part of its supply chain unit, into the hardware technology group which is responsible for making its proprietary chips was also reported by the Reuters on Feb 7.
The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker is in pursuit of other business lines like selling of modems to carmakers, as said Intel’s Chief Executive Bob Swan, but at moment, Apple is its major customer for modem chips.
Further adding, Bob said that with the spread of 5G technology, Intel’s modem chips could also be appearing in many of the other devices like in network gears with the Intel’s computing chip already in it.
