ARM not alone in iPhone

Stephen Withers
Monday, 12 February 2007 06:09

IT Industry - Market

While ARM's role in providing processors for Apple's iPhone has gained plenty of attention, we're gradually learning about the role of other vendors such as Broadcom.

The Orange County Register has reported that Henry Samueli, chairman of Broadcom, has stated under oath that his company is also supplying a chip for the iPhone. We don't know for certain which chip that is, but it is thought to be the touchscreen controller. Samueli's statement was ambiguous, as the line of questioning switched from Broadcom H.264 (video encoding and decoding) chips to merely "a Broadcom chip".

The statement was made during a Qualcomm's suit against Broadcom for patent  infringement.

Other companies reportedly supplying parts for the iPhone include Samsung, Marvell and Infineon.

iSuppli's widely reported preliminary estimate of $US280.83 as the total cost of manufacturing an iPhone apparently involved estimates of individual component prices to the nearest 5c without definitive knowledge of which parts would be used. Presumably iSuppli relied their own and other analysts' market intelligence regarding which companies have received contracts, and based their numbers on the most likely items from each suspected supplier's catalogue.

Eventually, enough will be known about the iPhone to make meaningful estimates, but we doubt that will happen until analysts have actually pulled a sample apart. That said, iSuppli's teardown analyses are generally regarded as gospel.