Since at least last September there have been rumors about whether Apple has tapped wireless chipset manufacturer Qualcomm to power cellular baseband in next generation of Apple iOS devices, namely iPhone 5 and iPad 2. Last week a report came out of China suggesting the reports were true.
Italian systems engineer Piergiorgio Zambrini now says he sees conclusive evidence that Qualcomm will play a role in at least one upcoming iOS — in code he found by decompiling the latest iTunes. In a blog item published on Friday, Zambrini unearthed a chunk of code from the latest iTunes that he says outs Qualcomm and the next baseband provider for Apple products.
By email Zambrini says that the image he published is a chunk of text that comes from a part of iTunes’ code that is used, for example, to lock a device or “flash” it with a new baseband configuration.
The finding is in-line with previous rumors, but since Zambrini has made a hobby and small fortune breaking and breaking into iPhone software, it would be a report worth considering either way.
His smoking gun? References to files ending in .mbn that are part of Qualcomm firmware. “Those files are the building blocks of any Qualcomm baseband,” he writes, which “means only one thing: QUALCOMM.”
“Baseband” is the system-on-a-chip used for cellular communication. In other words, at least one upcoming iOS device seems to be able to speak Qualcomm’s language.
If Apple was to switch to Qualcomm’s cellular baseband, it’s generally thought to be in preparation for Qualcomm’s upcoming “dual-switch” baseband chips, which would work with both the CDMA standard used by networks like Sprint and Verizon as well as the GSM networks networks used by ATT and T-Mobile.
If the rumors and Zambrini’s confirmation of them prove correct, it would be great news for Qualcomm investors. Stock modeling company Trefis says that cellular baseband is the most important part of Qualcomm’s business, citing research suggesting that in 2009 Qualcomm made about $4.2 billion from cellular baseband, a full 67% of its $6.3 billion in chipset revenue.
Trefis’s conclusion was that Qualcomm could have difficulty maintaining that kind of dominance. Powering the next generation of iOS devices could prove otherwise.
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/taylorbuley/2011/01/21/apple-hacker-finds-evidence-of-qualcomm-in-itunes-core/
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