LONDON – The suppliers for the various components within the iPhone 5 mobile phone announced by Apple Wednesday (Sept. 12) have mainly remained the same as they were for the iPhone 4S, even though several components have changed, according to analysts at Nomura Equities Research.
Samsung has retained its position as the application processor supplier manufacturing an upgraded ARM-based processor for Apple, the A6 (see
Analyst: Apple A6 processor is dual-core Cortex-A15). Similarly Qualcomm has retained its position as a baseband supplier and Broadcom remains in place as connectivity chip supplier.
The iPhone 5 now supports LTE mobile communications but it is not clear from Nomura's note whether that is supported by Qualcomm monolithically, by Qualcomm in a separate chip or whether another company has stepped in to add LTE capability. This may have to wait on disassembly of the iPhone 5 to be revealed.
However, Skyworks, Triquint and Avago are all listed by Nomura as suppliers of RF power amplifiers just as they are for the iPhone 4S. Similarly four memory suppliers are listed for both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S; Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba and Elpida. And three suppliers of quartz crystal devices also keep their places: TXC, Epson and NDK.
Changes come in the LCD area, according to Nomura, where Toshiba Mobile Display (TMD) has been added to Sharp and LG Display as a supplier liquid crystal display In the iPhone 5 it is a 4-inch diagonally sized 1136 by 640 pixel display.
Hon Hai is listed as the only contract manufacturer of the iPhone 5, a duty it shares with Pegatron for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. However, that could change in time.
According to Nomura, image sensor duties are again split between Sony and Omnivision, as they were in the iPhone 4 and 4S. Sony supplies the main 8-megapixel sensor while Omnivision supplies the 1.2-megapixel forward-facing sensor. Largan and Genius are listed as suppliers of the camera lenses but are joined by newcomer Kantatsu Co. Ltd. of Japan. NXP Semiconductors and AAC Technologies Holdings Inc. maintain their positions as suppliers of audio speaker driver while Knowles and AAC remain in place as providers of the MEMS microphones.
According to Nomura foundry analyst Patrick Liao, TSMC remains manufacturer of the baseband, connectivity, audio codec and power Management IC chips. While Texas Instruments is supplying touch screen sensor and the main MEMS supplier continues to be STMicroelectronics.
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