Why Apple's A5 is so big—and iPhone 4 won't get Siri
and iPhone 4 won't get Siri — Why Apple's A5 is so big and the iPhone 4 won't get Siri Noise-reduction technology from a start-up called Audience accounts for the size of the iPhone 4S chip and keeps Siri off the iPhone 4, analyst Linley Gwennap concludes.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's A5 had been signaled for the next iPhone in 2011, while a teardown had already identified Audience technology behind the iPhone 4's noise cancellation. An iOS 5.0.1 update also made a Siri port to the iPhone 4 legally possible, separating software availability from the hardware explanation advanced here.
Gwennap's analysis turns that split into a product-positioning argument: voice features depend not only on iOS, but on the audio-processing hardware Apple chooses to ship in each model.
First-order effects
- The iPhone 4S's A5 becomes a point of functional differentiation if Audience-related noise processing is required for Siri-quality voice input.
- iPhone 4 owners face a hardware, rather than purely software, boundary for Siri under Gwennap's analysis; the claim that Apple will withhold Siri from that model is disputed in the supplied relationship data.
Second-order effects
- Audience gains strategic importance as a component supplier if its noise-reduction technology helps determine which iPhones can support Apple's flagship voice feature.
- Apple can use tightly integrated silicon and audio components to reserve new software experiences for newer iPhone hardware, even when the operating system can run on older devices.
Third-order effects
- Voice interfaces are beginning to make component choices visible to buyers: processors and signal-processing hardware can define feature eligibility as much as screen size or storage.
- If this product pattern holds, handset upgrades will increasingly be driven by features tied to device-specific hardware rather than operating-system updates alone.
The trend: Apple is aligning advanced software features with differentiated device hardware, making the component stack part of the upgrade cycle.