The iPhone 5 News Blog

With all the recent talk about what Apple will do with its chips and processors in 2012, a new report suggests that Qualcomm’s Gobi chipset works beautifully in both the iPhone 5 and iPad 3.

Do all the reports and rumors about Apple’s 2012 chip choices have your head spinning? Mine sure is (even more so than usual). First, we’ve had to deal with an ever-shifting rumor mill about a quad core versus dual core A6 for both the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, and how the rival Tegra 3 quad core processor from NVIDIA may force Apple’s hand in making the quad core choice. More recently, purported photos of an A5X processor popped up.

Well, add into the mix Qualcomm’s new Gobi chipset, which purportedly would work nicely with both dual and quad core processors.

Desire Athow at ItProPortalhad this to say about the new Gobi 5 chipset: “The fifth generation chip supports TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE, LTE on FDD and TDD networks worldwide and embedded GPS capability, plus HSPA+ and EV-DO, thus providing the widest support in the market yet.” In this way, it could easily cover the 4G LTE needs of both the iPad 3 and iPhone 5.

Even more interesting is that Gobi v5 can straddle both dual and quad core processors nicely: “Gobi v5 also works hand in hand with Qualcomm’s own Snapdragon dual and quad core processors and, surprise, surprise, with x86 platforms; but there could be more.”

Qualcomm gear is not new to Apple; their stuff has been used extensively in both the iPad and iPhone, and so the sense here is that Gobi 5 could be the “one chipset to rule them all,” allowing Cupertino to streamline production by using the same chipset for all territories and all carriers.

While the inclusion of the Gobi 5 chipset might not solve the dual or quad core issue, it does seem like an obvious choice for Apple’s inclusion of LTE in this year’s mobile offerings, and very well might give them a means of saving money of production costs, allowing for the iPad 3 to remain at the same $500 cost factor for the intro model.

By Michael Nace