iPhone 6 assemblers churn out 540,000 a day to meet demand

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iPhone6

Pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus shattered Apple’s previous records and its supplier are still struggling to keep up with demand.

Apple supplier Foxconn has continued to hire more workers to assemble the new iPhone models, reports the Wall Street Journal, but even though they’re already churning out over 500,000 new handsets a day, its 100 production lines operating around the clock in Zhengzhou still can’t keep up.

“We have been churning out 140,000 iPhone 6 Plus and 400,000 iPhone 6 every day, the highest daily output ever, but the volume is still not enough to meet the preorders.”

Foxconn now employs more than 200,000 workers at its Zhengzhou site that’s dedicated to making new iPhones, and is the sole supplier of the iPhone 6 Plus. It also does a majority of the assembly for the smaller iPhone 6 but is finding it difficult to boost production according to the report.

Workers at Foxconn also confirmed rumors of production issues with the iPhone 6 Plus thanks to the in-cell technology that allows touch sensors to be integrated into the LCD. Foxconn employees claim rate for producing the 5.5-inch display is only around 50%-60%. Production of the 4.7-inch display on the other-hand is 85% successful.

Both new iPhones are shipping on September 19th, but available iPhone 6 Plus units will be harder to come by during the first few weeks. Wait times for the iPhone 6 are now 7-10 days, while the iPhone 6 Plus has slipped to 3-4weeks.

Source: WSJ

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