Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 5 is probably already being tested right now in one form or another inside those capacious Anechoic chambers that The Mothership holds. But that doesn’t mean it will be out any sooner than next summer.
When it does arrive it is quite likely that Apple will break its longtime exclusive partnership with Infineon for the iPhones Radio chip, and go with rival company Qualcomm.
Why is that? Well for starters Intel recently purchased Infineon outright, and for various reasons the relationship between Intel and Apple has been cooling of late. Part of that is more to do with restrictions Intel has put on which GPUs Apple can mate with the CPUs it buys from them. i.e. Only Intel’s. One could also surmise that Apple don’t particularly like being tied to Intel for all their grocery shopping needs, and iPhone chips as well as desktop and laptop chips is a chip too far.
Another good reason though, is that Qualcomm can offer Apple not only a CDMA baseband chipset that will work on networks like Verizon’s they can also offer chipsets that will open up pretty much every mobile phone network in the world to the iPhone.
Of course, Apple may well split where it gets its baseband chips from between both Infineon and Qualcomm, just as it splits its real GPU sourcing for its computers between NVIDIA and AMD/ATI.
Either way, expect new networks for the iPhone 5.
Are you tired of the Verizon rumors? Or hyped because it really going to happen this time? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…
Apple (AAPL) iPhone 5 May Have Qualcomm Radio Chip originally appeared on: Touch Reviews
