A production halt by TSMC, the company manufacturing Qualcomm’s S4 chips, could impact the availability of the upcoming LTE-enabled HTC One X (and other devices such as the Huawei Ascend P1). According to SemiAccurate sources, TSMC abruptly stopped its 28nm chip production about three weeks ago (before MWC 2012 kicked off) “to make unnamed changes to the process.” The stoppage affects Qualcomm’s S4 SoC which will power some LTE-enabled models HTC’s upcoming HTC One family (including the HTC One X and HTC One S).
The report adds that production is expected to resume in “short order” and that full production will resume by the end of March. It remains to be seen if production will resume with existing wafers in production or will start from scratch. If the latter, it could be June before new chips are ready.
The HTC One line is scheduled to launch globally starting in April. A production delay could push this out for models using the S4 chip, including the HTC One X headed to Rogers and the HTC One S headed to Bell, Fido, TELUS, and Virgin Mobile in Canada. The international version, using the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, does not appear to be affected though. Given that no official launch dates have been provided by carriers, they may simply be able to readjust launch schedules with fewer issues than if launch plans had been announced.
The report has yet to be officially confirmed or denied by Qualcomm or TSMC.
Read more: SemiAccurate (Source: Android and Me)