iPhone 5 to Come with Qualcomm Baseband Chip?

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Infineon, the company used by Apple to provide the baseband chips they require for the iPhone, is just about to be replaced by Qualcomm. That’s the new rumor in town and we’re going to put a pin in it for the time being.

Infineon has been purchased by Intel, but Apple might not be particularly interested in this detail. What Apple is interested in is to make the most of the current and future iPhone generations and what better way to do that than to strike new deals with as many mobile operators out there. And one of the most important markets to be conquered in the near future is, naturally, the USA.

Apple’s exclusivity agreement with AT&T will end in the near future and rumors indicate that Apple will bring the iPhone both to T-Mobile and Verizon. And from these two carriers, Verizon seems to be the most important. With over 90 million subscribers, Verizon represents a great challenge for the iPhone and the iPhone 5 will most definitely come with CDMA support.

To help with that we have Qualcomm, a company that’s probably going to replace Infineon exactly in order to bring CDMA support to the next-gen iPhone. So, if Qualcomm will be in charge of the CDMA iPhone 5, then why not choose the same company to make GSM iPhone 5 too? In fact, why not make a dual CDMA/GSM iPhone 5 world phone from the beginning? That seems to make a lot of sense and Infineon might indeed lose this lucrative business opportunity. Intel will surely be annoyed at Apple for such shenanigans, but Cupertino will go its own way no matter how Intel feels about it.

Since we talked about a new T-Mobile iPhone earlier on today, what would you rather buy? A T-Mobile iPhone 3GS/4 or a Verizon iPhone 5?