iPhone manufacturing capacity?

[thewitt]

If Apple can ship 40,000,000 units a quarter, every quarter, that puts minimum capacity at roughly 400,000 units a day. Minimum. We know they can do this.

If they are now quoting shipping times of 30 days from now, how many units in the backlog? At the minimum capacity number, that would be 12,000,000 units on back order, but we all know the 40,000,000 per quarter is not a maximum number.

How many units a day do you think is maximum capacity? At 500,000, that would equate to 15,000,000 currently on back order. At 600,000 that would be 18,000,000....

Now the ship date and back orders won't be exactly accurate, but it has to correlate to some degree.

 

[smoledman]

Safe to say I bet the # of backlog orders that Apple hasn't accepted is 2x as many as they have. Demand for this thing is insane.

 

[cvaldes]

The math isn't that simple, otherwise any random schmuck from the MacRumors comment forums could do Tim Cook's job.

Some of the manufacturing capacity would be in clearing the backlog of existing orders. Other portions of the manufacturing capacity would be allocated to building inventory for the launch in new markets.

Also, there is a production ramp. The Day 1 manufacturing yield will not be the same as the Day 300 manufacturing yield. The contract assemblers improve their procedures and yields as time passes.

Additionally, Apple is quite aware of seasonal variances in product sales. If Apple needs 40 million units for Q4 CY2012 and 25 million units for Q2 CY2013, they will communicate this to Foxconn, Pegatron, etc. It would be up to the contract manufacturing partners to staff accordingly. Apple isn't going to pay a factory of 60,000 workers to twiddle their thumbs for one quarter and neither is Foxconn. It would be up to Foxconn to retool the manufacturing line for another client or for another Apple product line (e.g., iPad). It's not a flat, steady demand every single day of the year.

 

[thewitt]

Except the historical shipments are relatively flat quarter to quarter, so though it's not as simple as I've laid out, it's not rocket science either to take a reasonable guess at capacity.

I read another post where someone stated with inside knowledge that capacity was only 150,000 units a day. Clearly that's off by at least 250,000 units...

 

[smoledman]

I'm pretty sure Apple is gonna sell 50 million iPhones from this weekend to Dec 31st.

 

[chown33]

Except the historical shipments are relatively flat quarter to quarter, ...

Citation needed.

Simply googling iphone shipments per quarter finds graphs that suggest a far different picture. Two examples:

http://assets.fiercemarkets.com/public/mdano/amis/iphone-quarterlyshipments-new.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_simple.svg

And the Wikipedia one has a table, with links and references to primary sources.

 

[cvaldes]

I read another post where someone stated with inside knowledge that capacity was only 150,000 units a day. Clearly that's off by at least 250,000 units...

No, 150K per day actually sounds about right for capacity around launch day. Assuming a five-week (35 days) pre-launch production ramp at 150K units per day, that would mean 5.25 million units in available inventory on launch day.

And guess how many units Apple sold the first weekend? Just about that much, and Apple executives claim that their sales figures were supply constrained.

That would explains why people who ordered online on Sunday or Monday are still their orders "in processing" (or whatever the wording is). With a 150K capacity, clearing the backlog will take a while.

 

[KnightWRX]

If Apple can ship 40,000,000 units a quarter, every quarter, that puts minimum capacity at roughly 400,000 units a day. Minimum. We know they can do this.

If they are now quoting shipping times of 30 days from now, how many units in the backlog? At the minimum capacity number, that would be 12,000,000 units on back order

Well, no because the entire manufacturing capacity is not sent out to orders from their online store.

I walked in to the Apple store in Montreal today and bought one "off the shelf", with no reservation/pre-order, less than 30 minutes to wait for activation.

Tons are being sent to carriers, tons to retail outlets and some are being fielded for online orders. You can't make such a claim, it's just not grounded in reality.