On 2008-01-02, Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
> The iPhone trolls fail to realize that this is far worse news for them
> than it is for Verizon. Qualcomm makes the only viable 3G chipset today.
[...]
> Apple is screwed as well. They will have a difficult time getting a 3G
> chipset from anyone, and face the very real possibility that if they do
> commit to a particular chipset, they will get slapped with an import ban.

Of what you wrote the above is the only bit I disagree with. My bet is
that Apple is waiting to use this, or a similar, Infineon 3G chipset

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ysaaue

which is the upgrade for the 2.5G Infineon baseband and RF processors
Apple uses in the current product. Note the "Q3 2007" note, apparently
still in future tense. If Apple decided to commit to using this vendor,
and this vendor's functionality, early on they couldn't have shipped a
3G product any earlier than the rumors now have it as this chipset is way,
way late.

I'd be surprised if Apple switched to a Qualcomm chipset now since if
they'd been interested in doing that they would have done that in the first
place, been shipping a 3G product already and, perhaps, would have already
been caught up in Qualcomm's patent troubles (I'd also be surprised
if the story about Verizon being Apple's first choice, which was based
solely on reports from Verizon sources as far as I can tell, actually
matches Apple's view of what Apple preferred for about the same reason).
Apple may have chipset vendor problems, but they're currently more likely
to be delivery rather than patent problems.

Of course you never know, or at least I certainly don't (I've also seen
speculation that Apple might use a single chip processor Broadcom began
sampling in October, but I don't trust that either). We'll see what Apple
actually ships when they ship it.

Dennis Ferguson