Apple might not make a 5G iPhone until 2020, leaving its customers without the latest, fastest internet technology.
The new report from Bloomberg comes despite the fact that networks – and most other major manufacturers – are preparing to update for the technology over the next year.
It will mean that Apple will be far from the first to the market with the fast new internet technology. Rivals like Samsung are expected to launch their own 5G phones soon, which will theoretically benefit from vastly improved connectivity.
But it will also probably ensure that the technology is in place before the iPhone carrying it actually arrives. Apple has often held out on such upgrades initially, waiting until they are improved and perfected.
Like 3G and 4G before it, 5G is expected to offer a vast increase in speed and reliability. But it is also talked about in much more enthusiastic terms: it will be faster even than internet connections delivered over WiFi, and might improve connectivity in such a way as to fundamentally change the ways that phones work.
Such upgrades have previously come with weak coverage and poor performance, putting customers off the new technology. 5G's proponents argue that the speed increase that arrives with the new technology will be worth such teething problems.
Those backing 5G claim that it will fundamentally change how networks and communications are organised. Networks will be so much faster than WiFi that they could make the wireless technology useless, for instance, and data transfer will be so fast that it will allow people to have internet connections to places across the world.
