iPhone 6s ships

Today Apple starts shipping the iPhone 6S and 6S plus or is it 6plus S.

What’s inside?

We know a lot about what it does but what’s in side. Out friends iFixIt have prised an iPhone 6S open. We use iFixIt for repair kits when we need to replace an iPhone battery or broken screen for clients.

For a full report see the iFixIt page.

Key components are from the usual suspects: Qualcomm , Broadcom , Skyworks Solutions , Avago, NXP and a few others.

Last year Apple introduced Apple Pay utilising the NXP Near Field Communications (NFC) chip. The Dutch-based semiconductor company also continues to have space inside Apple’s latest phone with the NXP 66V10 NFC Controller replacing the 65V10 in the iPhone 6. Last year, the M8 motion co-processor was a separate chip (with iFixit believing it to be made by NXP,) but this year the M9 has been embedded along with the A9 chip made by Apple. NXP also has the NXP 1610A3, which iFixit believes is “an iteration of the 1610A1 found in the iPhone 5s and 5c.”

From an investing perspective these companies will be selling a large number of chips to Apple.

How many will Apple sell?

Research firm IHS Technology forecasts that Apple will sell 236 million iPhones in 2015, up 22% year-over-year, thanks in part to China.

“Sales of the iPhone 6S should do better than past iPhone initial sales because of wider country availability early, especially China,” analyst Ian Fogg said in an e-mail.

Qualcomm, which has had its share of troubles over the past twelve months, still has the modem inside the iPhone 6s (Qualcomm MDM9635M LTE Cat. 6 Modem), as well as the Qualcomm QFE1100 Envelope Tracking IC, Qualcomm PMD9635 Power Management IC and the Qualcomm WTR3925 Radio Frequency Transceiver.

In addition, InvenSense, whose chips help the iPhone flip and rotate the screen, flipping back and forth between portrait and landscape mode, is back with its InvenSense MP67B 6-axis Gyroscope and Accelerometer Combo.

Avago continues to have space inside the iPhone 6s, with the Avago AFEM-8030 Power Amplifier Module. Qorvo , a combination of TriQuint and RF MicroDevices, has the TriQuint TQF6405 Power Amplifier Module and the RF Micro Devices RF5150 Antenna Switch chips.

Apple continues to give space to Samsung, which not only makes the Apple A9 chip, but Samsung provides the RAM inside the iPhone 6s, with its Samsung 2 GB LPDDR4 RAM.