Multimedia iPod(s) by end of 2005?
Apple has reportedly just contracted with Alphamosaic, a Cambridge, UK chip designer (and child of U.S. parent company Broadcom) specializing in video, image and audio chips. Alphamosaic is currently in the testing phase of the VC02 chip, touted as the world's most advanced mobile multimedia processor. The chip has been shown to handle 3D video display on 3.5-inch color LCDs as well as capturing 8 megapixel images. The Cupertino gang clearly seems to have some sort of multimedia mobile device in the offing, though the specifics are anyone's guess (analysts will eat this news for breakfast — get ready for a massive "What Would Steve Jobs Do?" game played out by folks who actually get paid to sit around and speculate on this stuff). It could be a single device with various multimedia goodies: digital camera, video recorder, gaming device, wireless device, and cell phone — although knowing Apple's penchant for maintaining simple interfaces, it's also likely we could see a whole lineup of multimedia devices catering to specific niches, complete with a common development platform for the fleet of Alphamosaic-based iPods. If Apple gets the gears turning on this, we could see these new devices roll out by the end of the year, or perhaps early in 2006 after the infamous Jobs keynote at Macworld in January — but on the other hand, all of this could be yet another round of that good ol' idle Apple speculation we all know and love.
