“Several wearable devices such as Apple’s iWatch and Qualcomm’s Toq are reportedly seeing less than 50% yield rates due to difficulties applying surface treatments on their metal injection molded (MIM) chassis, according to sources from the upstream supply chain,” Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes.
“MIM-made components used to be used inside products, but as the components are now becoming part of the external design, surface treatments have become an important process for the look of products,” Lee and Tsai report. “Since clients have high demand over quality, and also need high volumes of supply, most component makers are having difficulties satisfying both of requirements.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With patent activity seemingly seeming accelerating in 2013, you’d think that Apple would be well along their path to Liquidmetal by now, meaning that any issues Apple is dealing with are different than those being seen by all of the also-ran non-Liquidmetal wrist-borne device makers. Lumping Apple into a group of maker of “several wearable devices” would lead us to question the veracity of this report, unless Apple is still too far away from Liquidmetal production and are attempting to use non-Liquidmetal production techniques and materials. This report, if true, might hint that the first iWatch will not be using Liquidmetal in any notable fashion.
And, of course, the reported yield rates, if true, for Apple could be within expectations at this time in the product’s development. Not enough data.
Need input… More input, Stephanie! – Number 5
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