Last year, the entire iPhone 12 lineup had 5G mmWave antennas for the American models. But, according to some supply chain reports, this might change with this year’s models. The rumor, reported by Patently Apple, states that a second supplier in Taiwan might get a large order for iPhones with mmWave antennas.
After the incident in India’s Wiston iPhone Plant, Apple seems to have paid special attention to this manufacturer. After today’s report coming from Taiwan, antenna manufacturer Qiqi, which is a subsidiary from the Wistron Group, has just received an order for a large amount of mmWave modules for the new iPhone models.
According to the report, this will be the first time Apple uses Taiwanese antennas for their phones, which will be included in all of the iPhone 13 series.
At face value, this seems like more countries might get mmWave support on the newest iPhone models. Some of the countries in the shortlist to get this feature might be China, Japan, UK and Germany, since they have been working on their own 5G tech.
Another theory could point out at the fact that new batches of iPhone 12 models will be distributed internationally with mmWave antennas, but this seems unlikely.
The report and other information related to it is extremely vague, so we will wait for further reports related to the antennas on these new iPhones.