We haven't had any Apple rumors for at least a fortnight, so this week's reports of an “iPhone 5” and a small-screen iPad were overdue.
Apple will come up with an LTE handset next, believes one analyst, helping the firm to leapfrog some of its increasingly powerful rivals and target early LTE movers like Verizon.
The speculation comes from a frequent source of Apple device premonitions, Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw, who published a research note saying the iPhone 5 would include LTE and would give Qualcomm an entry to the firm.
“We believe the company has selected Qualcomm as its modem supplier for the CDMA iPhone as well as for the iPhone 5,” Kumar wrote. “The iPhone 5 will likely use a two-chip modem, allowing the company to create 3G and 4G products.”
He added, in an interview quoted by CNet, that “switching suppliers for something as critical as a baseband (3G/4G) modem is a very complex and time-consuming task.”
Of course, there isn't much choice when it comes to CDMA modems, with Qualcomm the only serious supplier - or indeed LTE/CDMA combinations, should Apple want an integrated, single-chip solution for both networks.