Back in July we heard news that Apple had placed an order with Pegatron Technology, which, although sounds like some sort of Transformers character, is actually a manufacturing company that’s better known for its laptop production. the company previously produced and shipped nearly 4 million phones, but was said to be producing 15 million more. that number is small potatoes compared to today’s news from DigiTimes.
Apparently, Apple will be building an army of 56 million iPhones in the second half of 2011. No, not all of these will be the coveted iPhone 5 that we keep hearing rumors about. DigiTimes says about half will be the new model, and the other half will be the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, which includes the CDMA model that works with Verizon’s network.
But why is Apple planning on producing another 25 million units of its older models when the company is rumored to be releasing the iPhone 5 in the next month or two? could it be that the rumors of Apple creating an iPhone 4S, a phone that will have a few updates but won’t necessarily be anything to write home about, are true? is Apple manufacturing a mid-range iPhone to try to market towards that consumer base of people who think the iPhone is just too expensive? after all, Apple already sold 18.65 million iPhones in the first two quarters of 2011 and the company has sold 222 million iOS devices since the first iPhone launched in 2007.
Apple was estimated to produce 50 million units at the end of the second quarter of 2011, so the jump to 56 million is an increase of 12-13 percent. we still have no confirmation as to what company or companies are doing the manufacturing, but we do know it’s based in Taiwan. It could most definitely include Foxconn, Apple’s main partner for building iDevices.
More at DigiTimes, via AppleInsider