Google Phone Windfall Skips Chipmakers

A high-throughput Internet connection would also make sense, which brings to mind Wi-Fi suppliers Marvell and Broadcom, also among the initial backers of Google's phone plan. And powerful graphics acceleration and application processing, products made by Texas Instruments(TXN) and Nvidia(NVDA), were also on the list.

The role of flash memory chips presents a more intriguing question.

Apple's iPhone was great news for flash memory makers: The device packs 8 gigabytes of NAND flash for storing music and videos, and capacity seems likely to continue increasing in future versions.

But Apple and Google represent two different generations of tech companies, each imagining the cell phone from their own unique perspective.

Apple's NAND-packed iPhone reflects its origins as a PC company, in which data is traditionally stored locally, on the machine itself.

In the Google worldview, on the other hand, personal data -- from email to YouTube videos -- is stored away from the device, on the Internet "cloud."

It's unlikely that future cell phones would do away with flash memory entirely. But it's not hard to imagine that handsets developed from the ground up to interact with Google's set of online services could have much less need for beefy, and ever-increasing, banks of on-board flash memory.

As Google moves forward with its plans to conquer the cell-phone market, chip investors may find the move creates a new set of winners -- and losers.

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