“Apple Inc. is preparing for its largest initial production run of iPhones, betting that larger-screen models will lure consumers now attracted to similar phones from Samsung Electronics Co. and others,” Lorraine Luk and Daisuke Wakabayashi report For The Wall Street Journal.
MacDailyNews Take: Luk and Wakabayashi obviously have a loose definition for “similar.” Off-the-shelf 32-bit antique chips and an off-the-shelf OS stuck into a chunk of misshapen Suwon plastic do not an iPhone make.
“The Cupertino, Calif., company is asking suppliers to manufacture between 70 million and 80 million units combined of two large-screen iPhones with 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays by Dec. 30, according to people familiar with the matter,” Luk and Wakabayashi report. “Its forecast for what is commonly called the iPhone 6 is significantly larger than the initial order last year of between 50 million and 60 million versions of the iPhone 5S and 5C—which had a display measuring 4-inches diagonally, these people said. Both of the coming models are expected to feature metal cases similar to the iPhone 5S and likely come in multiple colors, these people said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Unapologetically non-plastic.
“For Apple, one possible hiccup with the larger screen is that display makers for the new iPhones are struggling to improve the production of the larger 5.5-inch screens, people familiar with the matter said. The production is complicated because the displays are using in-cell technology, which allows the screens to be thinner and lighter by integrating touch sensors into the liquid crystal display and making it unnecessary to have a separate touch-screen layer,” Luk and Wakabayashi report. “To factor in the possibility of a higher failure rate for displays, Apple has asked component makers to prepare for up to 120 million iPhones by year-end, the people familiar with the matter said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Only 2 months left, give or take a bit, left until the rumors of the iPhone 6S/7. At least from this one my 5.5″ iPhone isn’t dead yet, but still, I’ll believe it when I see it. Btw, Apple could double those orders and still have supply constraints through the holiday quarter.
Don’t you mean 2 months left, give or take a bit, until the rumors of the 7S/8 start?
This December quarter is going to be a blockbuster with 70 million total iPhones, iWatch, updated Apple TV, buybacks, etc. Looks like a 35-50 percent increase in EPS from the 2013 December quarter. The stock is dirt cheap at the current price of $94 a share.
That’s one of the biggest problems with Apple. It always remains dirt cheap. We just can’t ever seem to get that P/E up high enough. Apple is pouring a lot of buyback money into Apple and that 7 for 1 split should have set the stock on fire, but it didn’t do much at all if you were to compare it to Google. The company doesn’t do buybacks or dividends but gets a 30+ P/E forever. Why is that? Investors are downright happy to pay $500 a share for Google and not willing to pay $100 a share for Apple.
Maybe Apple should invest their hard-earned cash into creating wearables that help users perform Jedi mind tricks. Then watch their stock explode.
Huh? What happened to September or October launch?
“People familiar with the matter” or more simply out: “I have no source so I’ll just say this to make you think I have one”
That phrase is so overly used in almost every paragraph of so many “news” stories that it is utterly meaningless.
Rant over.
I wonder if that phrase is counted in the word count. Easy way to say nothing and meet quota.
Particularly often used by the Wall Street Journal, where it took not one, but two, authors to write this “story”.
The article’s last line made it sound as if Apple is expecting high screen failure rates. I would think component manufacturers do some kind of (spot) QA testing before shipping of product. Is there any history of component failure percentages for past screens after phone assembly?