Citing a report out of the Far East posted earlier today, AppleInsider reports that the lineup of component suppliers for the fifth-generation iPhone and second-generation iPad has been decided on, by Apple.Qualcomm is responsible with building the first CDMA cellular base station in the early '90s. The company has, by far, the most know-how in the field.
Both devices will reportedly incorporate baseband chips from CDMA inventor Qualcomm, while over a half-dozen other iPhone 5 and iPad 2 component suppliers are also cited in the Economic Daily News report
cited by AppleInsider.
The report appropriately points out that rumors of Apple dumping Infineon chipsets in future versions of the iPhone have been circulating for almost a year now.
In early 2010, it was reported that Apple and Qualcomm had engaged in a discussion over "future cooperation". Three weeks ago, the Commercial Times reported that Qualcomm was, indeed, working its way into Apple’s iPhone 5, although these rumors remain to be verified.
As noted above, Taipei's Economic Daily News claims knowledge of over a half-dozen other component suppliers for Apple’s next-generation iPhone and iPad.
It appears that many of them have remained in place, according to the AppleInsider report, which enumerates the suppliers and their assigned work: “CPU from Samsung, Wi-Fi chip from Marvell, Flash memory from Intel, touch screen controller by Broadcom, audio chip from Wolfson, video display interface chip from National Semiconductor/Infineon, Bluetooth from CSR and power management from TI.”
Perhaps the most solid indication that Qualcomm is blessing the iPhone 5 and iPad 2 with CDMA chips is the
discovery of a cryptic "iPhone developer guru" job posting on the Qualcomm website in August.
At the time, the same AppleInsider suggested that the job posting indicated that an Apple - Verizon deal could be on the table. Verizon is known to support the CDMA standard.
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