Sunday, October 23, 2011

Key Parts of iPhone 4S are "Made in Korea"

As noted widely in the press and in an earlier post here, the most valuable parts in the iPhone 4 were made by Korean companies.  Now, as reported in the Donga Ilbo, that pattern is continuing with the iPhone 4S.  As reported in a teardown analysis by iSuppli, the phone's NAND flash memory is manufactured by Hynix, while the application processor, the brain of smartphones, is Samsung`s dual-core A5 processor. iSuppli said "die mark" on the product show that Samsung manufactured it. Though the A5 chip does not have the Samsung logo, it holds Samsung`s pattern on its surface as discerned by experts. Before the release of the iPhone 4S, foreign media said Apple changed its main supplier for the A5 chip to the Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC. TSMC, however, was unable to meet Apple’s demand in quality and quantity, experts said.

1 comment:

  1. I'm still left wondering why, yet again, South Korea is on the slow train for the release of the new iPhone. Visit the Korea page for the iPhone 4S, and all it says is "Coming Soon".
    http://www.apple.com/kr/iphone/

    Hopefully that won't be like the "coming soon" that lasted over a year before the original release of the iPhone here ...

    I'm sure it's not due to anything on Apple's side, probably just feet-dragging by the KCC. But, at some point ... you just start wondering ...

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