Silicon Valley Business Journal/Luke Stangel: Apple loses longtime executive who once led 5G modem work

Silicon Valley Business Journal
Technology
Apple loses longtime executive who once led 5G modem work

By Luke Stangel
Contributing writer
Apr 30, 2019, 6:24am PDT

Longtime Apple Inc. executive Rubén Caballero is out, amid an internal reshuffle of the company’s 5G modem development team, The Information reports, citing unnamed sources.

Caballero joined Apple in 2005. He was involved in the strategy, roadmap and design of the earliest iPhones and iPads, a role that eventually expanded to every hardware product at the Cupertino-based company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In 2009, he reportedly warned then-CEO Steve Jobs that the iPhone 4’s radical new design would lead to dropped calls. Apple ignored his warnings, shipped the phone and and quickly found itself mired in “Antennagate” — an early tech scandal that Apple ultimately resolved by offering free phone cases to every iPhone 4 owner.

Caballero continued to rise inside Apple, and left the company this year as one of its vice presidents of engineering. At one point, it was rumored he had been in charge of the team developing Apple’s in-house 5G modem chip.

That changed in January, when the company restructured the team, bringing it under Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji, Reuters reported at the time.

Caballero appears to have left Apple sometime after January. His company email address and phone number no longer work, and a company source told AppleInsider that he’s no longer listed in the employee directory.

The move comes amid a number of changes at Apple around the 5G modem chip. Apple had previously bought modem chips from San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., but stopped after suing Qualcomm over its business model.

The company switched to buying modem chips from Santa Clara-based Intel Corp., which struggled to keep pace with Qualcomm. Concerned that Intel might not deliver a 5G mobile modem chip in time for the 2020 iPhone, Apple earlier this month settled its lawsuit with Qualcomm and inked a multiyear deal to again buy modem chips from the San Diego company.

Intel immediately halted development of its 5G modem chip. Weeks earlier, Apple poached an Intel executive who had been a key player in the development of that chip. That executive joined Apple around the time Caballero left.
By Luke Stangel
Contributing writer
Apr 30, 2019, 6:24am PDT
 Deadline: Friday, August 30, 2019
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