Baseband development may be too “herculean” even for Apple

Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff believes Apple won’t be manufacturing a baseband chip for its iPhone or iPad anytime soon For the foreseeable future, the company will continue to use off-the-shelf silicon to meet its cellular needs. Qualcomm currently supplies Apple with its baseband hardware, which manages the phone’s radio functions and allows it to connect with cellular networks. Modoff says Apple has the money to enter the baseband manufacturing market, but it likely isn’t willing to commit to the time that it takes to build up such a complicated process. He estimates it would take Apple about five years of investment and over 1,000 engineers to develop a custom baseband for its mobile devices. “Instead of an organic baseband development, we believe Apple is rather trying to realize better integration with existing baseband chipsets and their apps processor, or possibly developing their own internal Wi-Fi chipset,” Modoff said. Instead of a baseband chip, Apple may be hiring a team of radio frequency engineers to develop its own WiFi chipset or for some other unknown hardware. The company allegedly has hired 30 mid- and senior-level baseband software and hardware engineers from Qualcomm and Broadcom, with another 50 openings actively being advertised on job boards. Apple has moved towards designing and manufacturing its own custom hardware and components for its devices. The company currently develops its own A-series processor, which can be found in both the iPad and iPhone. Not only does this in-house develop help protect sensitive information from leaking outside the company, it also allows Apple to optimize the performance and inter-operability of the hardware and software. [Via AppleInsider] Continue reading →

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