Thursday, February 28,2008 @ 11:45am
3G iPhone due mid-year with Infineon chip?
The 3G iPhone is coming in the middle of 2008 with technology supplied by Infineon, says an analyst with the investment bank UBS. Nicolas Gaudois claims his statement is based on various checks, and particularly an HSDPA design win by Infineon set to ramp up during the second quarter of the year. This might not be of concern except that Infineon is said to also be ramping down EDGE chip production for the current 2.5G iPhone, with the intention of clearing out inventory.
The latter point may suggest that Apple does not intend to have EDGE-only options in future iPhones, a choice which could conceivably make sense if it decided to release a cheaper product than the $399 and $499 devices presently on sale. For the HSDPA technology, Infineon is said to be building the baseband controller, RF module, and power management unit.