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Apple chooses Samsung chip for next-gen iPods

Samsung Electronics recently scored a major design win when Apple Computer selected its new MP3 media processor over one from PortalPlayer to power its next-generation of iPod digital music players.

Samsung executives made the announcement while speaking at the SEMI Strategic Business conference on Wednesday.

Last week PortalPlayer announced that Apple had decided not to use the its next-generation media chips in its upcoming iPod music players. In response, PortalPlayer's stock bled 45 percent of its value in two days.

"I knew PortalPlayer would take a dive," said Jon Kang, senior vice president for the technical marketing group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. "I knew that we would win this design."

Kang referred to the company’s chip as the "PortalPlayer killer." It's said to be based on 32-bit processor technology from ARM Holdings.

In a brief interview after the presentation, the Samsung exec said the design win represents the company's largest LSI chip order to date. “We’ve been working with Apple a long time,” he said. “It’s a huge win for us.”

He added that Samsung also supplies the "majority" of NAND flash to Apple’s iPod.



31 Comments

SpamSandwich 19 Years · 32917 comments

Quote:
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Samsung Electronics recently scored a major design win when Apple Computer selected its new MP3 media processor over one from PortalPlayer to power its next-generation of iPod digital music players.

Samsung executives made the announcement while speaking at the SEMI Strategic Business conference on Wednesday.

Last week PortalPlayer announced that Apple had decided not to use the its next-generation media chips in its upcoming iPod music players. In response, PortalPlayer's stock bled 45 percent of its value in two days.

"I knew PortalPlayer would take a dive," said Jon Kang, senior vice president for the technical marketing group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. "I knew that we would win this design."

Kang referred to the company?s chip as the "PortalPlayer killer." It's said to be based on 32-bit processor technology from ARM Holdings.

In a brief interview after the presentation, the Samsung exec said the design win represents the company's largest LSI chip order to date. ?We?ve been working with Apple a long time,? he said. ?It?s a huge win for us.?

He added that Samsung also supplies the "majority" of NAND flash to Apple?s iPod.


Dang. Wish I had purchased Samsung stock.

g_warren 21 Years · 624 comments

Lol. I don't think this makes THAT much difference to a company the size of Samsung though does it?

tedndi 20 Years · 1866 comments

Things that make you go Hmmmmm?ARM the very manufacturer of the original Newton....<insert tablet speculation here>
from wikipedia:

The MessagePad 2000 and 2100, with a vastly improved handwriting recognition system, 162MHz StrongARMSA-110 RISC processor, Newton 2.1, and a better, clearer, backlit screen, attracted critical plaudits. Although their size and expense were factors which kept them from being as popular as later PalmOS devices, the Newton still has a small but passionate user base. The final evolution of the Newton's handwriting recognition system is still considered by many to be very impressive, only matched by the more modern Tablet PC handwriting recognition system.
The MessagePad could be used with the screen turned horizontally ("landscape") as well as vertically ("portrait"). A change of a setting would instantly rotate the contents of the display by ninety degrees. Handwriting recognition would still work properly with the display rotated.
The use of 4x AA NiCd (MessagePad 110, 120 and 130) and 4x AA NiMH cells (2x00 series, eMate 300) gave a runtime of up to 30 hours (MP 2100 w/ 2x 20 MB linear Flash memory PC Cards, no backlight usage) and up to 24 hours with backlight on. While adding more weight to the Newtons than AAA batteries (as used in the MessagePad and MessagePad 100) or custom battery packs, the choice of an easily replaceable/rechargeable cell format gave the user a still unsurpassed runtime and flexibility of power supply. This, together with the Flash memory used as internal storage (if all cells lost their power, no data was lost due to the static character of this storage), gave birth to the slogan "Newton never dies, it only gets new batteries".

melgross 20 Years · 33622 comments

What is so interesting about these conglomerates (or maybe I should say Chaebol) is how one division competes with the other.

Samsung's semiconductor division sells Apple their largest share of Flash. Now they sell Apple the latgest order they've ever had for these chips.

But the CE division is competing with those same iPods that the other division is so eagerly selling to.

Right now, Samsung is selling far more to Apple, than they are selling MP3 players retail.

chucker 23 Years · 5052 comments

Quote:
Originally posted by TednDi
ARM the very manufacturer of the original Newton....

ARM doesn't manufacture CPUs. They design cores.