I think it's because they swallowed Intel's 5g modem business. intel's modems were miles behind the competition in 4g and their 5g modems were straight failures. I do remember the hilarious PR around it.
"hey I know it seems bad because all our products got cancelled and everyone we work with was let down, but it's all because our modem is sooooo good we're skipping the first chipset (which totally works and is done for reals) and moving the second chipset up by 6 months"
The Intel PR around their modems sounded like it was written by Trump.
the problem there is intel's 5g modems just didn't work as opposed to worked well and then got sued by Qualcomm. Apple would also pretty happily fight that battle in court. Make a working 5g chipset then release it, make millions in market with a back up chip ready if they get a bad court decision but hope to fight qualcomm over unfair patents.
But they need a working competitive 5g chip first, which Intel and now Apple using basically the same starting point, just don't have yet.