A new report out of Asia suggests that Apple will expand its supply chain beyond Foxconn and Pegatron. New suppliers and assemblers, however, could affect component and build quality of the iPhone 5S and beyond.
As it is every year, the iPhone remains a nebulous issue for 2013. The anticipation of the iPhone 5S, together with a heavily-rumored low-cost iPhone, continues to rise with each passing summer month. What looms large for this year and next, however, are some of the key paradigm changes coming behind the scenes for Apple products ? namely, Apple?s move away from Samsung, Foxconn, and Pegatron as its ?big three? for component manufacturing and assembly.
Will Apple?s move to diversify its supply chain affect product quality for the iPhone 5S this year and/or future iOS devices?
In case you haven?t heard, the previous news that Samsung is being dropped for Taiwanese competitor TSMC for the development of processors for the iPhone and iPad, ?is being joined by a new report from Apple Insider, which suggests that Foxconn and Pegatron are going to lose their duopoly as assemblers for iDevices:
In a note provided to?AppleInsider, well-connected KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said he expects Apple to continue to diversify its suppliers, an initiative most clearly seen by the company?s move away from rival smartphone maker Samsung.?
Kuo believes top candidates include Taiwan?s Compal Communications, which has experience in both designing and manufacturing handsets for Nokia, Sony and Lenovo; Wistron, an established supplier of EMS services to RIM (now BlackBerry); and Inventec Appliances, a firm that is currently an iPod suppler. Both Compal and Wistron will be new entrants into Apple?s supply chain, while Inventec would expand its contracts beyond the iPod.
We?ve sort of seen this coming with Foxconn: you?ll recall a previous article from iPhone 5 News Blog writer Anna Tan on how Foxconn is now daring to get into the gadget business on their own, in an attempt to reduce their dependence on Apple. An even more-recent report suggests that the upcoming iPads have been delayed due to a rift between Apple and Foxconn over Foxconn?s move to build more Android-based devices, as well as their snafus in assembling the iPhone 5.
Going back to the Apple Insider report, Kuo is saying that this new move to diversify the iOS supply chain is going to greatly benefit Apple, since it will give them much more bargaining power. Well, that?s great for Apple, but what about us?
Fellow iConsumers, we should be cautiously concerned about all of this supply chain wrangling by Cupertino. It should not come as ?good news? by any means. Companies like Samsung, Foxconn, and Pegatron have been the production pillars of the iPhone and iPad for quite a long time; Apple owes some credit to these companies for helping them to produce reliable, rugged products. If you?ve been buying Apple products for ten years or more, you?ll recall that the company has not always been known for high-quality devices: they?ve had plenty of rough patches in the past, producing way too many lemons on the product line.
I?m concerned that the iPhone 5S, low-cost iPhone, iPad 5, and iPad Mini 2 could all suffer in quality and performance from this shake-up. It?s also possible that the iPhone 6 in 2014 could be a mess. It was well-documented in 2011 that TSMC was unable to perform well enough to take over for Samsung. Why should we be trusting of their services now?
Consumers should not want Apple to rock the boat when it comes to production. We?ve already had to accept that Android-based smartphone developers are going to continue to out-innovate Apple in the smartphone market, since Android has nothing to lose in developing novel designs, and Apple ? who still produces the top smartphone by far ? has everything to lose. What Apple does have over Android, however, is quality. Cupertino should be careful not to tinker too much with production and risk the last bastion of what makes the iPhone a great smartphone.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/iphone5newsblog/news-feed/~3/GwTf4AptMD0/
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