Economic Daily News has reported from China that the iPhone 8 launch will not be delayed, as key suppliers are planning to ramp up their respective volumes of the iPhone’s components starting in June, 2017.
There have been several reports about a possible delay to iPhone 8’s launch and subsequent availability, including from reliable sources. The new information, however, reportedly comes from multiple vendors in Apple’s supply chain in China.
“Upstream to downstream suppliers in the iPhone supply chains, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), SLP (substrate-like PCB) makers Zhen Ding Technology and Kinsus Interconnect Technology, and battery supplier Simplo Technology, are ready to ramp up related iPhone parts starting June.
TSMC will begin to fabricate the wafer starts needed for the production of A11 processors on June 10 and to deliver the chips in volume quantity in the second half of July, the report indicated.”
So, things are looking good on the supply chain side, but what about assembly – the next stage in producing the iPhone 8? The report suggests that assembly units such as Foxconn, Pegatron and Winston are all ramping up recruitment and training of workers ahead of mass production of iPhone 8.
But there’s still one loose end that hasn’t been tied off yet.
The major re-design expected on the 10th anniversary iPhone Edition involves multiple moving parts. Until now, there has been a bottleneck with respect to the fingerprint sensors that Apple wanted to embed in the OLED panels that it is using for its edge-to-edge display on the 2017 iPhone.
Unfortunately, the report doesn’t tell us if this critical issue has been resolved. Even if other parts of the supply chain and assembly are on schedule, iPhone 8 could still face a shipping delay if Apple doesn’t solve the technical challenges in implementing the sensor embedding.
We’re keeping an ear to the ground on news about the fingerprint sensor, so be sure to check back every now and then.
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via Digitimes