14 DAY TRIAL // Tuesday, PortalPlayer announced that it had struck a deal with CSR, a manufacturer of WiFi and Bluetooth wireless chips, and were going to add wireless capabilities to digital media players This may not seem like a big deal, but, if you read between the lines, this could spell that iPods are going wireless in the not too distant future.
PortalPlayer provides Apple with the multimedia processors that are used in the iPods. A day later after the first announcement, PortalPlayer CFO Svend-Olav Carlsen said iPod-related sales comprised 95% of PortalPlayer's business, while predicting that such sales would be around 92% to 93% of total revenue this year. That same day, at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology Conference in San Francisco, PortalPlayer CEO Gary Johnson said the company expected to announce customers of the new chipset product by later this year.
While Johnson did not comment on whether Apple will be realizing a wireless iPod, and Apple representatives did not return any calls seeking comments, it is hard to imagine that PortalPlayer would start working on a new product without their biggest customer on board.
At the conference Johnson said PortalPlayer has a "strong" relationship with Apple and is focused on upgrading its technology for the iPod maker. "I do believe we're keeping them on the technology roadmap," Johnson said. "We're delivering the key attributes which keep them very successful."