“In a report released Monday, LEDinside analysts from market researcher Trendforce said they have yet to see the necessary orders for sapphire glass wending their way through the supply chain in time to meet an expected September launch for a 4.7-inch iPhone 6,” Lance Whitney reports for CNET. “A new iPhone with sapphire glass could still roll out in limited numbers, they noted.”
“Would the lack of a sapphire screen put a dent in sales of a new iPhone?” Whitney reports. “Not likely, though the uber-hard material could be a key selling point.”
Whitney reports, “In their report, the analysts explained their pessimism over a large-scale rollout of sapphire-screened iPhones in time for September: ‘The sapphire material is still being applied in new generation Apple smartphones camera lenses and fingerprint recognition readers. If the new iPhone keeps up Apple’s previous smartphone models hot selling records, sapphire demands will be driven by the smartphone’s applications till the end of this year. However, the much anticipated sapphire cover glass remains missing from the picture. Analysis of the iPhone 6 supply chain indicates related component suppliers need to ship products to OEMs for assembly in June 2014 to meet the September launch date. Yet, the research institute did not discover demands for smartphone cover glass. The sapphire glass version new iPhone will be issued in limited volumes this year, mostly because sapphire ingot manufacturers yield rates were lower than forecasts and issues involved in sapphire glass processing.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Well that could be a problem. My phone is working fine.
Did Apple ever say it would?
After seeing years of anti-Apple articles from these so-called “analysts”, I really wouldn’t put much stock into this.
AAPL Max Pain for weekly options expiring this week is $96. The analysts have write articles designed to get us there somehow before Friday or the people paying their salaries (options sellers) will lose money. It’s that simple.
Agreed. Plus, we all know that Apple has invested a lot of money with GT Tech on sapphire production. The results will surface sooner or later – that is far too much sapphire production for camera lenses and touch ID sensors.
Sometimes these things take a while. We are still waiting on the more widespread implementation of liquid metal, for instance. Base on some more recent Apple patents, it is possible that LM and sapphire will be released together in a new product. Perhaps Apple will trial run these technologies in the rumored 5.5″ version of the iPhone 6 rather than the 4.7″ version. That might explain why the larger model is not expected to be released until well after the 4.7″ model.
In the end, Apple is going to execute its roadmap on its own pace, releasing technologies when they are ready. Nothing that we or analysts say or post will change that. And that is one of the reasons why Apple continues to be so successful.
Analysts are always seeing things that are not there, or failing to see things that are there.
I wouldn’t worry about what an analyst says. The only thing that matters is what Apple actually produces and the analysts are doing nothing more than trying to join the dots to work out what iPhone 6 might be like.
“Analysts are always seeing things that are not there, or failing to see things that are there.”
Well put. Analyst WRONG is more common than Analyst RIGHT.
Like the 64 bit chip?
I’ve seen nothing but reports to the contrary. In fact an article regarding apple investing heavily in a sapphire producing plant in Arizona comes to mind. So this makes 0 sense to me
Could just be a push to recover Corning stock price that took a hit this week for short term gains reasons.. Who knows, maybe Apple and GT are building that ‘transparent aluminum’ material mentioned in Star Trek: voyage home.. 😀
Then what are those 450 furnaces in Arizona for? Hmm….
Perhaps global warming.
They have no clue what they’re talking about.
Scratch that, they know what they’re talking about in so much as they know they just rumour-mongering to get traffic and to try and justify their worthless existence. Most of them probably struggle to keep a straight face when they’re constantly contradicting their own analysis.
These idiots have missed the memo telling them that Apple is its own sapphire supplier.
Ordered FUD to keep the stock from breaking $100. It’s been going on all week, shorters panicking. Just a matter of time though ’till the shorters move on to Amazon, Microsoft etc.
I’d love to have a sapphire screen on my next iPhone, but it’s definitely not a make-or-break issue for me as to whether or not I’ll be getting one. And I doubt it is for very many other people, especially since no one else has one.
For me it would be a break issue
I asked my wife last night if she has any scratches on her 5S. No, she doesn’t. Nor do I on mine, and I’ve dropped my caseless phone a bunch. I appreciate that sapphire is better, but the Gorilla Glass is no slouch.
It doesn’t matter what the flipping screen is made out of. My screen is fine after 2 years. No protector, no case. Quit referring to Sapphire as some sort of exotic jewel.
Why would there be any “orders wending their way through the supply chain” for this analyst to see? There is only one vendor, GT Advanced, who is releasing their 2Q earnings August 5.
There would be no other source of information for these analysts to see. I actually think that Corning’s crappy results reported yesterday is evidence they lost the iPhone6 business to GT Advanced. Whoever got the business should have started shipping last quarter if Apple is going to release the phone in Sept. as expected.
Not having the latest greatest will be a widely perceived problem and limit sales in 2014
They’re basing this off of supplier checks? Seeing as Apple has investing in the Mesa, AZ plant to produce sapphire glass, I seriously doubt Apple or its manufacturing partner are making any comments about orders (which would be for Apple) to anyone. That removes an entire large exclusively-sapphire glass manufacturing facility from these analysts’ “research”.
Can’t Apple just take a few pallets of sapphire glass out to Sky Harbor and ship it to China?
iPhone 6s (s = sapphire)