After years of rumors, the Apple Watch is finally shipping next month, but according to a new report coming out of China, it’s not likely to be a relaxing month for Tim Cook and pals to spend clinking champagne flutes and celebrating a job well done.
That’s because Apple Watch manufacturer Quanta apparently continues to have yield problems with the debuting wearable device, causing a defect-free rate of less than 30 percent. In other words, really, really bad.
The same report suggests that this might be the reason Apple left a one month window between its March 9 announcement and April 10, when the Apple Watch is finally opened up for pre-orders. To help speed to the finishing line, Quanta is reportedly borrowing 3,000 workers from Foxconn to help improve the yield rate.
It should be noted that this is just a rumor, and a potentially sketchy one at that. Although Quanta was said to be suffering yield issues with various Apple Watch components, an earlier report from Taiwan’s United Daily News suggested that these were solved months back. More to the point, wouldn’t Apple have done something about it by now if such a tiny fraction of Apple Watches were being produced defect-free?
If there’s any truth to this story, what seems more likely is that Quanta has come to an agreement with Foxconn to borrow some of its workers for the Apple Watch production line due to the challenges of recruiting such large numbers. After all, this is the company that had to hire 30,000 people to its books earlier this year to try and fill Apple’s demands for MacBooks and Apple Watch orders.
That number of people can’t exactly be easy to find…
Via: GforGames
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Apple Watch makers call in reinforcements to fulfill big orders”
I call BS.