China may soon have its second-proprietary 5G modem with the news from Digitimes that the Tsinghua Unigroup subsidiary  Unisoc has had its design validated by TSMC.

After Intel pulled out of the 5G modem market, the USA has only one supplier – Qualcomm. With the addition of Unisoc to HiSilicon as a supplier, China has two.

Unisoc’s Ivy 510 5G modem is to be fabbed on TSMC’s 7nm process this year, according to Unisoc CEO Steve Chu.

Unisoc will join a band of five suppliers of 5G modems: Qualcomm, Mediatek, HiSilicon, Samsung and Unisoc.

All of them, except Samsung, will have their modems made on TSMC’s 7nm process.

News Source: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-get-second-5g-modem-source-2019-05/