According to most reports, Apple won"t be producing a 5G iPhone until next year. But up until now, the rumor was that the company would only be including the network upgrade in the two top-end models. According to a new report from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via MacRumors), all three of them will support 5G.
The reasons that Kuo cited were threefold. For one thing, Apple now has Intel"s smartphone modem business, so it has additional resources for developing a 5G modem. The second reason is that Kuo expects 5G Android handsets to sell for between $250 and $300, and while those devices will only support sub-6GHz frequencies, there will be more demand for 5G. The third and final reason was that it could benefit Apple"s augmented reality efforts.
Historically, Apple has been slow to adopt new networking technologies. The firm"s first 4G LTE smartphone was the iPhone 5, which was released in September 2012. Meanwhile, the first 4G smartphone was the HTC Evo 4G, released in June 2010. 3G started showing up in 2003, but Apple didn"t include it in an iPhhone until the second-generation model in 2008.
With that in mind, it"s not surprising that Apple would wait until 5G is a bit more ubiquitous before it puts the technology in its mass market devices. But apparently, we"ll see it in all three models, rather than just two.