The investment bank Pacific Crest Securities yesterday predicted in an opinion piece in Barron’s that the iPhone 6 will not only boost Apple Inc., it will also benefit component makers like InvenSense, NXP Semiconductors, and Synaptics.
After a recent trip to Asia to scout local manufacturing plants of those publicly traded companies, Pacific Crest analysts Kevin Chen and John Vinh report that the iPhone 6 will likely support near field communication and optical image stabilization. “Following supply-chain conversations, we are increasingly confident that the iPhone 6 will support near field communications (NFC) radios supplied by NXP,” the analysts note in their Barron’s piece. “This is consistent with our prior view of NFC in the iPhone 6 given the deployment of mobile NFC-enabled VeriFone terminals in Apple stores, the China UnionPay agreement, Apple payment patents and NXP's mobile-payment licensing agreement.”
The investment bankers believe Apple will deploy an NFC radio without the secure element in the iPhone 6. “While some investors may be disappointed by an NFC-only solution, we view this as a positive and incremental revenue opportunity for NXP,” Chen and Vinh report.