The grudge match between Nvidia and Qualcomm was escalated at Mobile World Congress, where almost every single new Android device was running either a Tegra 3 or Snapdragon S4 processor. Now news out of the supply chain indicates that Qualcomm’s manufacturing partner for its 28nm chips has run into unexpected delays. If true, that could mean that large numbers of the Snapdragon S4 – the processor heart of phone like the HTC One S, The Panasonic ELUGA, and the LTE versions of the HTC One X, Asus Transformer Pad Infitinty 700 and Transformer Pad 300.

Manufacturing systems-on-a-chip is no easy processes, and anything from a shortage of rare earth materials to breakdown in equipment could be affecting production. At this point we don’t know what the issue is, or indeed, if there is one – there’s no word from Qualcomm or any of the manufacturers that would be affected. The good news is that a design flaw probably isn’t to blame, considering how long the S4 series of chips has been in development.

A delay of a few weeks could push major phones like the HTC One S back from their current April dates. Even more worrying is the idea that Qualcomm’s quad-core Krait platform, now in the late stages of development, could be pushed back further than its current target of late 2012.  Of course, none of this is confirmed and everything may be hunky dory – plus, there plenty of other things that can delay major device releases the old fashioned way.

[via TMo News]