“Supplier sources in Japan and Taiwan, home to dozens of Apple suppliers, said they initially expected mass-production of the next iPhone to begin in June,” Reiji Murai and Clare Jim report for Reuters.
“That date may have begun to slip beyond June, the sources said,” Murai and Jim report. “The phone, widely referred to as the iPhone 5S, is expected to include new features such as a fingerprint sensor. A supply chain source in Taiwan said Apple was trying to find a coating material that did not interfere with the fingerprint sensor, and this may be causing a delay.”
Murai and Jim report, “In addition to the 5S, suppliers say Apple is also developing a cheaper model, which can appeal to lower-income buyers in growth markets such as China and India. A supplier source in Japan told Reuters small-scale production of display panels will begin in May, ramping up to mass production in June. Both phones will use the same 4-inch screen, but the cheaper version will probably not include the new fingerprint technology and sport a cheaper plastic casing, the sources said.”
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MacDailyNews Take: It’s Reuters, which lately is on a mission to destroy whatever credibility that it may have had regarding Apple at the very least, so you have to take whatever they report with many grains of salt.