Apple is developing its own Wi-Fi chips, could launch with iPhone 17

Apple is developing its own Wi-Fi chips with in-house design and the company could debut its first version with Wi-Fi 7 technology in next year’s iPhone 17 lineup.

Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple has increased efforts to reduce reliance on Broadcom for Wi-Fi and BlueTooth chipsets for iPhones.

Each year, Apple sells millions of new iPhones and Broadcom is a major beneficiary of this business. Kuo said more than 300 million Wi-Fi and BlueTooth chipsets are purchased by Apple for iPhones including the latest iPhone 16 series.

However, the company wants to change this status from an outsourcer to a source. Therefore, it could introduce a new Wi-Fi and BlueTooth solution with a product launching in the second half of 2025.

The first potential product for this Wi-Fi solution could be the iPhone 17. The company will print this chipset with TSMC’s 7nm process and first to use Wi-Fi 7 technology.

The N7 or 7nm technology is used in a variety of applications including smartphones, HPC, automotive, and advanced digital consumer electronics. With a wide variety of criteria, the company could use this chip in not only iPhones but also in other smart devices such as iPads, MacBooks, and more.

Talking about the processing power, N7 could improve performance by 30 percent compared to 16nm technology. It lowers power consumption and brings higher logic density.

Wi-Fi 7 on the other hand boasts fast data transfer at up to 30 Gbps and lower latency to transmit more data with less delay compared to Wi-Fi 6. It supports more connections simultaneously and offers better signal quality.

Modem

Apple has been designing in-house chipsets for a long time and there’s also a rumor that the company is building its own network modem to cut some shipments from Qualcomm.

It’s expected an iPhone 17 series model will introduce this modem chip. However, none of these plans are actually executed on the ground for now.