Report: Apple returned 8M shoddy iPhones to Foxconn
Manufacturer feeling financial pain after botching a batch
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Foxconn has apparently botched a batch of iPhones, which Apple returned to the contract manufacturer because they were not fit for sale.
Details of just what went wrong are sketchy, as the source for this tale is an anonymous Foxconn staffer chatting to China Business. That report, after being forced through a couple of translation engines, suggests Apple sent back at least five million iPhones, and maybe as many as eight million, “due to appearance of substandard or dysfunctional problems.”
With a cost to manufacture of $US200 apiece, Foxconn is apparently preparing to take a hit of up to $1.6bn to cover the cost of making replacement handsets. China Business suggests the cost of making new iPhones represents further bad news, not a reason for Foxconn's recently-revealed financial woes.
China Business is silent on which model of iPhone failed Apple's quality tests. If it's the current iPhone 5, or the still-on-sale 4S, the impact of eight million phones failing to appear would punch a two-or-three-week hole in Apple's supply chain, an assertion we make on the basis that the company says it sold 47.8m handsets in its last quarter. That quarter included Christmas, so we can safely assume the January-March quarter sees a little less handset-selling action.
If the botched phone is a newer-and-as-yet-unreleased handset, it could be grounds for a delay in its announcement or release. ®
COMMENTS
Highly Rated
Re: Shows
Apple take product quality seriously, other manufacturers could learn something here about not sending out a substandard product.
Yes and no. Good points for sending back substandard gear, bad marks for not spotting a production going off its quality bell curve before so many units were manufactured: it seems to suggest Apple is quite a distance from the production quality control, which has resulted in a substantial supply chain hit.
quality control?
How could you keep producing duds for that long without noticing? You would think they would pull random samples for testing and notice any fault long before they piled up millions of duds.
Re: Shows
"Apple take product quality seriously, other manufacturers could learn something here about not sending out a substandard product."
1) Other manufacturers like Foxconn? Didn't Foxconn send the substandard product out?
2) When did Apple become a "manufacturer" again?
Re: Shows
Quote : Apple take product quality seriously, other manufacturers could learn something here about not sending out a substandard product.
Of course they do, it's just that you are holding it wrong....
Re: Shows
@MrXavia -
Maybe they were QA'ing it the wrong way ;o)
