Apple Returned Five To Eight Million iPhones To Foxconn Due To Manufacturing Issues
Last year in September, Apple released the iPhone 5 to commercial and critical acclaim. When they released their latest smart phone model, Apple mentioned how complex it is to build one: “Never before have we built a product with this extraordinary level of fit and finish” – the statement belongs to Jonathan Ive (Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc.). So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that some of these models are faulty and have been returned to Foxconn (the iPhone 5′s manufacturer).
As you all know, the iPhone 5 is a worldwide success, but it is also a difficult smart phone to make as Foxconn still encounters issues during the manufacturing process of the iPhone 5. It would seem that between five and eight million units have been been returned by Apple to Foxconn due to faults that rendered the smart phones unfit to be sold. It is not clear what exactly was wrong with the returned units as the source for the news is a Foxconn employee (under anonymity, of course) who reported to China Business. The translation of the report was run through a few different translation engines and it shows that Apple returned more than five million smart phones (as much as eight million units) “due to appearance of substandard or dysfunctional problems.”.
If what the anonymous Foxconn employee reported is true, then it is bad news for Foxconn. Considering the cost for the manufacturing of a single iPhone smart phone is approximately $200, then Foxconn will lose $1.6 billion, money used to manufacture replacements for the faulty smart phones that were returned by Apple. This is bad news for Apple too because the direct consequence is that their iPhone supply was shortened.
This is not the first time Foxconn encountered problems regarding iPhone manufacturing. In fact, there have been problems as far as the iPhone 5′s launch. Many people reported that they have bought scratched handsets. There was also a quality control inspectors strike at the Foxconn factory last year. The latest report, regarding the faulty iPhones returned by Apple to Foxconn adds to the list of difficulties that the Taiwanese multifunctional encountered in producing Apple’s line of smart phones.
In the report there was no mention of what iPhone model failed to meet quality control standards, so we can only speculate. As we mentioned before, the iPhone 5 is a very complex to build smart phone, so we can guesstimate that the faulty units were iPhone 5 handsets. Regardless of which model was faulty, the fact remains that as much as eight million units were returned due to quality reasons and there will certainly be consequences, one of them being a short supply of iPhones. Another possible consequence might be a delay and in a strange coincidence the iPhone 5S is expected to be delayed.
