iPhone News Updated

Intel May Snatch up Infineon, Maker of iPhone, Android Chips

Purchase would put Intel in a dominate position in the smart phone industry

Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG, formed in 1999 from the spinoff of Siemens AG’s semiconductor division, is among the most dominant forces in the smartphone industry. While its CPU offerings have yet to take off and dominate, every iPhone and a large number of Android smartphones use some chip (such as wireless 3G modems) from Infineon’s portfolio.

Intel is looking to make Atom-based systems-on-a-chip designs (SoCs) for use in smart phones. (Source: Intel via The Register)

Now hot on the heels of its $7.68B USD acquisition of the world’s top antivirus software vendor McAfee, Bloomberg reports that the world’s top CPU maker Intel is preparing to purchase Infineon’s wireless business. The rumored purchase price would be 1.5B € ($1.91B USD). Infineon’s CPU unit and other businesses would presumably not be included in the sale.

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Android Hideous, Dev Tools Horrendous Says iPhone Facebook App Dev

Currently the two major smartphone operating systems out there has to be Apple’s iPhone iOS and Google’s Android platform, and although Android lags behind iOS in the app development stakes, the developer behind the Facebook for iPhone app, Joe Hewitt recently switched sides and went with Android.

However according to an article over on i4u by Robert Evans, Hewitt may have switched his allegiance from iOS over to Android but he doesn’t have that much praise for the rival platform as a recent Tweet says Android dev tools are “horrendous” and that the OS is “hideous.”

Although Hewitt does go on to say in the same tweet that “the absence of big brother telling me what to do gives it a slight edge,” meaning at least with Android you don’t get the restriction that is placed on a developer with Apple’s App Store policies.

Apparently Hewitt isn’t a big fan of Java, but he does like the Motorola Droid X due to its large screen, so maybe we will be seeing some descent gear now he’s with Android.

[Thanks: http://www.phonesreview.co.uk]