Apple now world no 3 smartphone maker to make own chips for iPhone

When Apple bought PA semi last year the usual rumour mills cranked up with expectation that Apple were going into the mobile chip business. It furthered confirmed it would not be using Intel's Atom processor in the next generation iPhone and iPods. More recently Apple has hired Mark Papermaster to lead its Iphone engineering team. Papermaster was a VP at IBM and one of the chief architects of the previous Apple chip darling the PowerPC.

What will this give to Apple? Well, it may allow them to differeniate from competitors who all buy chips from similar outlets like Samsung. And I would look to a sea-change is advertising and promotion of the next iphone and ipod with new speed wars between the rivals.

Apple's new iPhone business now sees them as the no 3 phone maker when ranked by sales value and last quarter they beat RIM in sales, pretty damn impressive in the time they have been in the market. It is now one of the core business revenue drivers within the company.

In my view the need for the iPhone to process incoming emails a little faster and to be able to switch apps without having to go in and out of the software itself are musts for the next steps for the iPhone development.

Utz