Infineon hit by short order of iPhone 3G chips?

Semiconductor shop Infineon this week downwardly revised the outlook for its Communication Solutions unit due to lower than expected volumes in wireless chipsets.

The company now anticipates revenues in the third quarter to be about flat from the previous quarter. A lack of orders for Nokia’s ultra low cost devices are understood to be one reason, but the word is that short orders of HSDPA chips are also to blame.

The reason this is interesting is that Apple is understood to be using the Infineon HSDPA chipset in its forthcoming iPhone 2.0 – the long awaited 3G version of the device.

Earlier this year, a hacker trawling through the beta iPhone SDK code discovered a line which makes reference to the Infineon SGOLD3H chipset, otherwise known as the PMB8878. The currently available 2G iPhone uses the SGOLD-28876 as its EDGE-capable baseband processor. The SGOLD3 however is fully HSDPA 7.2Mbps capable.

Apple has a sales target of 10 million units by the end of this year and to date is just over half way with 5.4 million devices shifted by the end of the first quarter. However, the device hasn’t done as well as hoped in Europe, with operators slashing the price of the phone to offload the last of the inventory. So what appears to be a smaller than expected order of HSDPA chips for the next generation device suggests Apple might have reined its expectations in.