AfterDawn: News

Production problems may delay iPhone 5

The iPhone 5 may have bigger hurdles to overcome than competition from Android. There is a report that significant production problems could force Apple to push back the launch date.

The most credible reports for Apple's planned launch of the next generation iPhone, primarily based on sources inside mobile carriers both in the US and Europe, say it should be here by the middle of October.



A new story from 9to5 Mac says production delays on one assembly line could delay the launch for a short time, and even lead to shortages of the much anticipated phone for a few months.

They say reports that millions of iPhones have already been produced actually refer to a new bargain version of the iPhone 4, which has been rumored for some time.

If accurate, this could be good news for manufacturers of high end Android phones. A shortage of iPhones over the Christmas season could boost their sales significantly.

That could easily be offset by a new, cheaper iPhone. Earlier this year, US market data from The NPD Group showed the iPhone 3GS, which is essentially today's discount iPhone, outselling every other smartphone besides the iPhone 4.

Keep in mind, that was without all the marketing hype surrounding every new iPhone release.

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 19 Sep 2011 15:43

• Previous article

• Google's Schmidt to testify before antitrust subcommittee this week

• Next article

• Qualcomm to slow down its Brew mobile OS

• 5 comments

• jonyjoe101

  from the picture I see it still has that defect on the outer ring where the gap between the antennas is. You might still need to hold the iphone in an unmanly way to get best reception. You can always buy a pink bumper guard to cover the defect and hope for the best,
  Is the manufacturing delay cause by too much suicides from the workforce due to overwork?
  

  19.9.2011 23:50 #1

• hearme0

  But NOOOOOO.............this isn't possible. According to Apple fanatics, everything Apple puts out is flawless, perfect and not trendy but practical in every way.
  
  Yet there are a sh*tload of dumbsh*ts that will still buy into this simply because Apple slapped a #5 on it and made some minor, insignificant changes.............this as opposed to of course making it 4G compatible or changing up the OS to look just a tiny bit different than the previous versions or than a MAC.

  20.9.2011 02:06 #2

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by jonyjoe101: from the picture I see it still has that defect on the outer ring where the gap between the antennas is. You might still need to hold the iphone in an unmanly way to get best reception. You can always buy a pink bumper guard to cover the defect and hope for the best,
  Is the manufacturing delay cause by too much suicides from the workforce due to overwork? LoL...they never fixed it on the iPhone4 either, not even after the contracts expired and they had to do more production runs. If an android phone had a problem like that, they would probably kill off the phone completely, but at least they would fix the problem for the next batch made.
  
  Oh, and if some engineer came to them 8 months before production started and showed the problem, it would have been fixed from any of the companies that do android...not that any of said companies would take anywhere near 8 months to get a device to production.
  

  
  

  20.9.2011 05:35 #3

• xtago

  Originally posted by jonyjoe101: from the picture I see it still has that defect on the outer ring where the gap between the antennas is. You might still need to hold the iphone in an unmanly way to get best reception. You can always buy a pink bumper guard to cover the defect and hope for the best,
  Is the manufacturing delay cause by too much suicides from the workforce due to overwork? Probably Samsung stopping production until the Samsung vs Apple 3G chip used in Iphone patent case gets finished.
  
  The Iphone could be killed on the spot by Samsung.

  20.9.2011 07:32 #4

• plutonash

  I feel bad for verizon customers. ATT's LTE network has just launched in 5 citified while verizon's has a good number of towers up and running. They'll prolly make it 3G, so no customer will feel the ridicule of another customer having a 4G chip in their phone.

  20.9.2011 10:27 #5