Forbes reports that while Apple may be able to introduce an iPhone 5 at any time of their choosing, the chips required to produce a well-designed 4G LTE smartphone simply won’t be around until late this year at the earliest, and probably 2012.
Currently, access to the turbo-charged 4G LTE networks requires a combination of chips Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said Wednesday Apple won’t use due to design compromised that it would require.
“The first generation of LTE chip-sets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make,” Cook says. Separately, Cook declined to talk about the timeline for introducing a new iPhone. “We never comment on unannounced products,” Cook said.
Those chips won’t appear in handsets until next year, says Will Strauss, president of wireless chip tracker Forward Concepts. “They’re right that there’s nothing out there that fits the bill, and likely nothing will until the fourth quarter of this year,” Strauss says when asked about Cook’s remarks.
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Chipmakers such as Qualcomm,, ST Ericcson, and Intel won’t begin offering customers samples of such chips until late this year. And those chips won’t begin appearing in handsets until next year, Strauss predicts. As a result, there won’t be a 4G iPhone any earlier than that.
So there you have it – while the iPhone 5 may be incredible, it’s unlikely that it will have 4G LTE technology. What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments!
[Forbes]
