Roger Fingas
Apple COO Jeff Williams will reportedly be meeting with Foxconn chairman Terry Gou when he visits Taiwan later this month, where he's expected to bring up the topic of production bottlenecks possibly hurting the iPhone X.
Williams is mainly headed to Taiwan for the 30th anniversary of TSMC, Apple's exclusive manufacturer for A-series processors, Nikkei said on Friday citing two industry sources. Foxconn — Apple's main assembly partner — is also headquartered in Taiwan, even if most of its manufacturing work takes place in China.
Although issues could improve come November, suppliers have allegedly been struggling with components for the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera, used in Face ID and animoji. In particular the problem may be camera's dot projector, used to generate depth maps.
KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently suggested that Apple could have just 2 to 3 million units stockpiled by the time the iPhone X ships on Nov. 3. While that would often be enough for other products, the X will launch in over 50 markets in its first wave, which could translate into extreme shortages in places like the U.S. and China.
The situation could be compounded by supposedly weak demand for the iPhone 8 versus the X. While sharing some technologies like an A11 processor and wireless charging, the 8 and 8 Plus lack both Face ID and an edge-to-edge OLED display.
At the TSMC event, Williams could potentially run into Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf, which Apple still depends on for many baseband chips despite a global legal battle.
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Wesley Hilliard
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
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20 Comments
Another misleading headline.
There are no "woes"' to discuss. It's all made up.
The iPhone 8 is in a difficult position: a solid evolutionary upgrade overshadowed by new technology in an as yet unavailable device that's grabbed most of the attention. I suspect that this will just mean a slower start to sales than usual and then more considered comparisons (including on price) will boost its prospects again.
It's interesting that the British consumer magazine Which? (well respected for its independence and methodical testing but a little superficial and naive on technology) has rated iPhone 8 as marginally inferior to iPhone 7 (and ditto for the two Plus phones). They say "The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are phenomenal but have been beaten in our tests by the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, partly due to slightly poorer battery life".
The new case design seems to have passed them by and their average-user perspective maybe means that the evolutionary improvements elsewhere are rated less important. Wireless charging gets just a passing mention (though I struggle to get excited about it too, it's not as though no wires are involved and I can put the device down near a power point and it ends up charged).
I hardly dare mention that Which? rates the Galaxy S7, S8 and Note 8 marginally better that the iPhone 7! Battery life and "slightly better cameras", since you ask.