Speculation grows over Apple deal

Apple chairman Steve Jobs may make announcement today

Speculation is growing that Apple chairman Steve Jobs will announce a new deal with Intel at today's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference.

The rumoured move would see Apple abandon its long-standing relationship with IBM to supply processors for the Apple range.

It is thought that Apple was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of processor choice in the IBM range.

Gary Barnett, research director at Ovum, said: "While we can see why moving to a dual architecture approach may bring some benefits, a wholesale move away from the IBM chips would be extremely foolish.

"Intel is not the de facto leader in processor design that it was a few years ago. In the recent past Intel has been out-innovated by AMD (with a better approach to 64-bit computing) and IBM (with a better long term strategy around multi-core chips).

"To defect from one processor architecture just as it seems about to take off, to one that may have already peaked, doesn't make any sense to us at all."

Barnett added that IBM should have no problems dealing with Apple's processor demands since it is already ramping up processor production.

IBM has the contract to supply processors for the big three gaming console manufacturers: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.