“In order to secure sufficient supply of touch panels used in the iPad and iPhone, Apple has talked with Taiwan-based makers, considering some room for them to hike quotes, according to these makers,” Yenting Chen and Yvonne Yu report for DigiTimes.
Such a move would “increase pressure to other vendors for tablet PCs and smartphone, touch panel makers believed,” Chen and Yu report. “In order to achieve its internal shipment goal of 40 million units of iPad in 2011, Apple has booked over 60% of the total touch panel capacity.”
Full article here.
Dear Wall Street,
Stop bitching about that big pile of cash.
Hear, hear!
Hear, hear, hear!
Most probably “internal shipment goal of 40 million units of iPad in 2011” is yellow journalism (typical of DigiTimes) made-up to give a “reason” to bash/suck on Apple-related “news” later, if Apple will not be able to achieve this number.
(Since Apple has multiple vendors for all of main parts, there is no way why would DigiTimes know these “internal goals” from talks to whatever component suppliers.)
Bonus if they pay the supplier more, but keep the price to consumers the same. Apple can afford it, and it’ll add even more pressure to companies trying to compete on price but have no war chest.
One effect of this and the shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake is that Apple will doubtless pay very even more attention to multiple sources of all components and materials, not just the headline ones.
A company the size of Apple can source smaller quantities of components simultaneously from multiple suppliers, yet still be the biggest customer that each of those companies has.
Furthermore, when they use multiple suppliers, it’s less problematical to shift from one supplier to another, so Apple will be in a much stronger position when it comes to negotiating contracts.
sheesh, we have had so much specufantasylation over the last week, enough, enough. I want my iPad on Friday from the Apple store in Chester. And get me back to 360 asap.