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i wonder how many they're selling per week? i would assume a large amount but then again stock is limited.
 
Wow, that's a lot of phones! Less lines soon? If so, I might get myself a 3G. :)
 
in my own personal experience when picking up my iPhone from AT&T last week, my first one was dead. my second replacement phone also had issues, before they got me my third phone which was good.

so i am sure there are QC issues on these phones....
 
The only ones who truly believed Apple would not reach the 10m iPhones were companies like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc. (and that was wishful thinking at best on their part). 1m in the first weekend, continued sellout since, and 22 new countries being added this month alone. Not only will Apple achieve the 10m number by December 2008, they will blow right through it.

Increased production often can lead to quality control issues, so perhaps we should go back to building cars, furniture, computers and the like by hand. Many less available, but hey, they would be REALLY GOOD products.

Oh yeah, with low quantity, high quality products comes a really high price tag (i.e. Porsche).

Apparently people are not aware of the quality standards that are put into our mass production fabrication and assembly plants these days. Are quauity issues a risk with increased production? Of course. Are they a given? Not at all.

Lets hold off judgement until we start seeing numbers (both sales and quality issues).
 
It would be interesting to see in which countries the iphone goes on sale the 22 second. The report only talked about Singapore. And the other 19?
 
At an average 45 minutes per sign-up, that's about 600,000 hours or 25,000 days of weekly red tape.
 
The Opinions of the MacRumors Community:

Phase 1: Apple sucks! They're creating a fictional demand by limiting supply; Apple needs to speed up production.

Apple increases supply.

Phase 2: Apple sucks! Product quality is going way downhill; Apple needs to slow down production.

Well said.
I agree with Phase 1 (refering to limiting quantities) < Jobs is laughing all the way to the Bank by limiting supplies...it makes us go crazy over the Hot item..so much, we forget why we were so hyped up to get it.

I'd rather see quality phones being produced at a limited rate...rather than speeding up production = crappy quality = recall = Waste our time x2 or x3times back to the Apple store.

MemphisDave
 
I don't buy this. 800,000 a week is way over the top, no matter how popular this phone is. That works out to 4,761 phone produced each hour. Where did all that manufacturing capacity come from?
 
I don't buy this. 800,000 a week is way over the top, no matter how popular this phone is. That works out to 4,761 phone produced each hour. Where did all that manufacturing capacity come from?

Hmm... I see what you mean: 1.3 phones built per second, 24/7 sustained seems like a very tall order. I mean it's not like making m&ms that just pop out of the mould and they're done.
 
I wouldn't blame the production speed for all the quality issues, I blame the lack of lead in the solder. Solder is mostly made out of tin, the problem is that tin has this horrible habit of splintering (something called Tin Whiskers, look it up) and causing shorts in electronic devices. A way to prevent this was to add a small amount of lead to the solder to stabilize the Tin. However the EU's RoHS rules prevents the use of lead (even though the Mercury in CFLs is much more dangerous). I feel this is the real reason for problems all across the computer industry. This causes problems in Video Game systems, Computers, TV, and Phone. In fact the satelite that the US destroyed a few months ago failed because of Tin Whiskers.

Bring back the .05% lead in Solder to make electronics reliable again.

TEG
 
As a shareholder, I am happy.

As a customer, I am terrified.

Apple's quality is dogp** nowadays, and the new white iPhones are already getting reports of cracks.

I just wish Apple would get quality fixed. I've bought three of the new iPhones, and with the buggy iPhone OS 2.0, I really regret the decision. They are simply poor quality tools.

Sure, Apple can fix them over the next 3-6 months with patches, but that's not the point. It's that type of shoddy craftsmanship that makes Microsoft who they are.
 
I guess the conclusion here could be:

1. done more and thorough testing
2. build up enough stock to launch their iPhone 3G on this huge scale

Now we have quality issues and annoying waiting periods (especially outside the U.S.).
 
how many of those 40 million will be cracked and will apple be obligated to replace? maybe they anticipate selling 20 million cracked iphones and are making 20 million to replace those . . . :p
 
As a shareholder, I am happy.

As a customer, I am terrified.

Apple's quality is dogp** nowadays, and the new white iPhones are already getting reports of cracks.

I just wish Apple would get quality fixed. I've bought three of the new iPhones, and with the buggy iPhone OS 2.0, I really regret the decision. They are simply poor quality tools.

Sure, Apple can fix them over the next 3-6 months with patches, but that's not the point. It's that type of shoddy craftsmanship that makes Microsoft who they are.

Agree. When i first saw this i thought about microsoft. Money over quality it seems like bill gates is behind apple lol. I hope they fixed quality issues before making this move.
 
Maybe Foxxcon is hiring. Learn the value of dollar. Foxxcon pays the equivalent of $50.00 per month. Live it up and check your voice mail. Cracks?
 
Apple's quality is dogp** nowadays

Based on what? You do realize that 1,000 people coming onto this board and complaining would seem like a lot of people, but would mean pretty much nothing.

So what are you basing this on? Consumer Report surveys? Government quality checks. Steve Jobs called you?

I mean, if you have numbers, I'd love to see them, but I haven't seen diddly yet (from anyone) to back this claim up. In previous years Apple has done better than other computer-makers based on customer surveys. Obviously we don't have any for this phone yet, so what are you basing this on?
 
here we go again. no one remembers how analysts and "people familiar with the numbers" gave far out estimates on iphone production and sales numbers year ago? the most modest ones of those were double of what turned out to be realistic, some of the were 10x the actual numbers.

besides, even if apple was producing 800,000 iphones a week at the peak, it's quite a stretch to assume they continue the same pace for a year. remember (again) the last iphone, there was three peaks on iphone sales: introduction week, the weeks after the price cut and holiday season. after each of those the demand fell, and never recovered from the drop after holiday season.

what's driving the rumor mill is the volatility of the stock. in the absence of news from apple, the price of the stock is driven up with rumors, some realistic, some ridiculous. we've had two just within 24h on this side.

then the realism hits in again and the stock price drops. this trend is further fed with negative rumors (eg, jobs' health just a couple of weeks ago).

until it's time to try to drive up the price again...
 
Does this mean that O2 will now start selling the white ones in their stores?

Of course not. Don't be silly.

I can't help wondering if they didn't know about production problems with the white model fairly early on and this has led to the non appearance.

Could be due to big rejection rates of the mouldings or a deliberate policy to keep the problem more isolated into certain markets.

Seems funny at WWDC they were all going to be available in the UK then by July 11 there were suddenly none.
 
I can't imagine they'd maintain that pace for a full year if true. It oughta drop by Xmas, earlier if an iphonette comes out, and fall to 0 in May to clear inventory.
 
Hmm... I see what you mean: 1.3 phones built per second, 24/7 sustained seems like a very tall order. I mean it's not like making m&ms that just pop out of the mould and they're done.

Not only that, can you imagine the logistics of simply warehousing the parts, packaging, etc. to readily supply the production line? This must be a rather massive operation!
 
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