“We’ve been hearing several reports that the launch of the iPhone 8 could be delayed compared to previous years,” Benjamin Mayo reports for 9to5Mac. “Reputable Apple analyst KGI Ming-Chi Kuo has also weighed in today, reporting that mass production of the OLED iPhone will likely be pushed back to October/November, instead of the normal August/September timeframe for new iPhone launches.”
“KGI says the reason for the production difficulties is that the new iPhone 8 includes several major cutting-edge components that Apple has custom-ordered,” Mayo reports. “The analyst still expects the iterative ‘7S’ models to launch on the normal schedule.”
“KGI says that a delay of one to two months for the production ramp of iPhone 8 will hurt Apple’s calendar 2017 sales as customers will want to wait for the shiny new device to be available,” Mayo reports. “KGI blames several ‘significant hardware upgrades’ in the iPhone 8 for the delays. This includes a custom OLED display panel, a custom Apple A11 10-nanometer SoC, an all-new designed 3D Touch module and 3D sensing cameras.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This highlights the danger (and stupidity) of continuing to contract components from your number one competitor. If we were Samsung, we’d start delivering the displays next Easter. Whatever contractual hits they’ll take could be made up with Galaxy S8 sales. It’s like Arsenal buying goals from Chelsea in a match against each other. If Chelsea delivers, they get paid; if they don’t, oh well, they win.
Apple, if they’d sufficiently planned ahead, would have cut the serial patent- and trade dress-infringing Samsung out of their supply chain altogether years ago. Apple has $260+ billion dollars on hand. They could have developed the technology and built twenty OLED factories to produce the displays they need (when two or three would have sufficed; they’d still have over $200 billion lying around).
Instead, they are once again beholden to an arch-rival and they have very little leverage.
That said, luckily for Apple, most iPhone Day One-ers will simply wait and purchase the new flagship whenever it’s finally available.
An, yes, we’ve been talking about this for years:
Here’s hoping Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to kick some Samsung ass someday, for a change, and is working very hard to alleviate, not maintain, or Jobs forbid, increase, Apple’s dependence on Samsung going forward. If not, perhaps Tim Cook, not to mention Apple shareholders, should “wake up.”
Here’s a question for Apple Inc. shareholders to ask their employee, Mr. Cook (tcook@apple.com): On which planet do companies get paid billions to stamp out parts for competitors’ products and then, once they’re assembled, turn around and repeatedly piss all over them while churning out an unending stream of knockoffs of the very products that they publicly denigrate?
(Obviously, and unfortunately, Mr. Cook thinks that planet is named “Earth.”)
Here’s a shorter question for Apple Inc. shareholders to ask their employee, Mr. Cook: “WTF are you doing any business at all with Samsung?”
Did Mr. Cook, operations genius, really get Apple so dependent on one company that Apple cannot live without them?
Samsung has been ripping off Apple for nearly half a decade now. How long, exactly, does it take to stop doing business with them? – MacDailyNews Take, April 26, 2012
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You want to know what’s really unbelievable? That, after half a decade, at least, of Samsung’s slavish copying, Apple continues to do billions of dollars of business with Samsung. Apple, which has enough money to build or bankroll anything they want, like a chip fab, or a touch screen display factory, or anything they could ever need.
“Oh, you copied our iPhone, our iPod touch, our iOS home screen, our icons, and our Mac mini? Here’s another three endless German lawsuits and, oh yeah, by the way, a $10 billion contract for touch screens.”
Something just does not compute here. If you get mugged, do you buy the leather for a new wallet from your mugger while pressing charges? If you’re Tim Cook, you do.
Apple could have – and should have – dropped Samsung like a bad habit years ago. Not one red cent should be going from Apple to Samsung today. It’s a travesty. It’s poor planning. And it’s bad business. The only conclusion we can draw is that Tim Cook, operations genius, boxed Apple in and is now stuck; beholden to a den of thieves. That sort of “decision making” doesn’t bode well for Apple’s future. It really doesn’t.
Here’s the question Walt Mossberg should have asked Cook onstage at D10: “Excuse me, Tim, but WTF are you still doing any business at all with Samsung?”
Wouldn’t you love to hear the answer to that one? Walt could use Keynote to flash all of Samsung’s knockoffs of Apple’s designs on the big screen behind Tim while he sputtered and stammered.
Next shareholders’ meeting or conference call, somebody might want to ask Mr. Cook that one. – MacDailyNews Take, June 1, 2012
SEE ALSO:
Apple signs two-year contract with Samsung for up to 92 million OLED iPhone displays – April 7, 2017
Apple may delay launch of flagship OLED ‘iPhone 8’ as late as November – April 5, 2017
Apple orders 70 million OLED panels for next-gen flagship iPhone – April 3, 2017