As the general consensus is that Apple will deliver the iPhone 5 in a couple of months time, or possible not one but two new iPhone handsets as speculated last week, the latest speculation turns to whether the next generation iPhone will come out to play as Apple’s first 4G LTE enabled iOS smartphone, and the answer to that according to some is no.
According to the guys over at iSuppli, if the iPhone 5 were to be a 4G LTE enabled smartphone then the device would almost certainly command a higher price tag than the current iPhone 4. The reason for this assumption is that as the cost of adding 4G LTE to Verizon’s HTC Thunderbolt was $39.75 this would be roughly the same when adding 4G LTE wireless standard to the next iPhone.
Senior analyst for IHS Wayne Lam says, “It remains to be seen whether the next Apple iPhone set for introduction in September will support 4G LTE. However, if it does, two things are clear. First, the iPhone’s minuscule printed circuit board (PCB) will have to grow in size in order to support the first-generation LTE baseband processor as well as all the supporting chipset. Second, the next iPhone’s BOM value certainly will increase substantially compared to the iPhone 4 if LTE is implemented in the same manner as in the HTC Thunderbolt.”
So basically as the most recent rumours claim that the iPhone 5 will be somewhat thinner than the iPhone 4, it doesn’t seem feasible that the next generation iPhone will come out to play packing 4G LTE unless Apple has found someway of reducing the size of the LTE baseband processor, which is probably unlikely.
Apple COO Peter Oppenheimer, at Apple’s earning call in April commented, “The first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make.”
Sop again, it appears that Apple isn’t prepared to compromise the design of the next iPhone and go larger to accommodate 4G LTE ability and would rather located a more efficient solution than going the same way as the HTC Thunderbolt, which could possibly be from Qualcomm who are expected to deliver their next generation LTE chip in 2012, so maybe Apple will bring the first 4G iPhone out when they deliver the iPhone 6 and the size and the cost would be more suited, thus it would appear that we will not see a 4G LTE enabled iPhone until next year.
