Samsung Taking PortalPlayer's Business?

Samsung will be the beneficiary of last week's announcement that PortalPlayer's media chip will not be used in upcoming flash-based iPods.

PortalPlayer's media chip has been used in Apple's iPod from the beginning, but PortalPlayer's stock dropped on the news that Apple had decided to pass on their upcoming PP5021 media processor chip.

While PortalPlayer's current chip will continue to be used in current iPods, eeTimes reports that Samsung has been working with Apple on a "PortalPlayer killer" 32-bit chip based on ARM technology. This new chip has been chosen for use in future flash-based iPods.

I knew PortalPlayer would take a dive, said Jon Kang, senior vice president for the technical marketing group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), the U.S. chip arm of South Koreas Samsung (Seoul). I knew that we would win this design."

Few details are provided on the benefits of the switch. Samsung, however, is also the supplier of much of the NAND flash memory provided in the recent Flash-based iPods.

Based on these component reports, there has been speculation that the flash iPods will see a revision later this year.