“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.