Samsung awarded iPod chip deal

An executive from Samsung revealed today the company has won the contract to provide the processors in Apple’s next-generation iPods, apparently taking the partner position that PortalPlayer said it lost last week. “I knew that we would win this design,” Jon Kang, senior VP for the technical marketing group at Samsung Semiconductor, said during a presentation at the SEMI Strategic Business Conference. “We won the design with the iPod.” Kang referred to the company’s chip as a “PortalPlayer killer” and said that Samsung, which already produces NAND flash-memory chips for the iPod nano and iPod shuffle, has been working with Apple for a long time. “It’s a huge win for us,” he said.