iSuppli speculates LTE costs and extra chipset will keep Apple away this year

Seth Weintraub | Jul 9 2011 - 10:25 pm PT

In a note last night, Wayne Lam of IHS-iSuppli made the case against Apple going with 1st generation LTE chips in its next iPhone.

“It remains to be seen whether the next Apple iPhone set for introduction in September will support 4G LTE,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for IHS. “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.”

I think Apple is more concerned with the extra space and battery life the new chips would consume much more than the extra cost of the components.“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,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple chief financial officer, speaking at the company’s April 2011 earnings call.

The next round of chips which would allow Apple to put LTE in a similarly sized package won’t hit the streets until the first half of 2012.

I don’t see an iPhone as big at the Thundebolt or Charge, ever.