Re: Yes but...
There are rumors that Apple is working on its own modems, but that would take them a few years. At least if they wait it will be a bit less difficult because they'd only need to support LTE & 5G, and they could ignore 2G/3G stuff.
I'm not sure it makes sense for Apple to design the chips themselves, what they really want is to license the IP. That would allow them to build the modem into their SoC to reduce cost / power draw, and allow them to control the software so they can remove any backdoors that Qualcomm may have set aside for spooks to do bad things to phones over the air (I say "may have" because it is known there are some serious security shortcomings in Qualcomm's baseband, but whether that's accidental or deliberate isn't known...)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
