In a blog post on Medium, Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo revealed interesting details about Apple’s future iPhone 18 and M5 Mac releases. According to the analyst, BE Semiconductor will drastically benefit from Apple’s upcoming products as the company has business with Apple’s manufacturers.
Kuo says that the iPhone 18 Pro’s wide camera will be upgraded to variable aperture in 2026, and BESI is the supplier of assembly equipment for aperture blades, a critical component of this upgrade. Last month, Kuo already revealed that Apple planned to add this change to the iPhone.
At the time, the analyst wrote that the “2026 high-end iPhone 18” will feature a wide camera lens with a variable aperture, “significantly enhancing the user photography experience.” The insider, known for his generally accurate predictions about unreleased iPhones, probably refers to the iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple has introduced new camera features with the iPhone Pro Max model before making them available to other models.
Apple wouldn’t be the first smartphone vendor to adopt cameras with variable apertures. Earlier this year, we saw similar features from phones like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and the Honor Magic 6 Pro. Before that, Samsung phones like the Galaxy S9 and S10 featured cameras with variable apertures.
Besides the iPhone 18 Pro improvements, the analyst also leaked information about Apple’s upcoming M5 chips. According to him, the M5 processors will adopt TSMC’s N3P node, which is known as the third generation of the 3nm process. With that, mass production for upcoming chips is expected in this timeline:
- Base-model M5: 1H25
- M5 Pro and M5 Max: 2H25
- M5 Ultra: 1H26
That said, Apple will likely unveil M5 Macs by the second half of 2025, as it still has some M4 Macs to unveil throughout 2025.
In addition, the analyst says Apple will continue to build out it’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure by producing high-end M5 chips, which will be better suited for AI inferencing. Previously, rumors revealed Apple wanted to ask other companies to create specific chips for its PCC infrastructure starting in 2026.
BGR will let you know once we learn more about future Apple products.