iPhone 5 rumor rollup for the week ending June 29
On this day, the anniversary of the original iPhone going on sale, the iOSphere celebrates with ever more tenuous and ever more familiar rumors of iPhone 5.
This week: iPhone production battered by flawed batteries; speculation that The Date of the Unveiling will be sometime after June 29; wireless charging; NFC ecstasy.
You read it here second.
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“[T]he information coming out Apple’s Asian supply chain is fuzzy, unfocused and unreliable.” — Ronald Carson, Tapscape.com, without explaining how fuzzy, unfocused and unreliable information can actually be considered “information.”
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iPhone 5 faces a “battery challenge”
Apparently stock analyst Brian White, of Topeka Capital Markets, whiles away his free time perusing Chinese news websites, like Sina.com, and thank heavens he does.
HINDSIGHT: Experts who predicted the iPhone would fail explain why (some deny)
In a “note to investors,” White explained that he discovered a Sina.com “story” or “report” that the unnamed company making the battery for the iPhone 5 “may be having trouble providing batteries … that are up to [Apple’s] standards,” according to AppleInsider’s Neal Hughes who wrote about what White wrote.
We know about Apple Standards. Steve Jobs held up the release of the white iPhone 4 for months and months because his suppliers could not get white right. [See our satirical “iMoby: the hunt for the great white iPhone”]
According to Hughes’ post, the investors note by White (no relation to white) about Sina.com’s report “suggested that only 30 percent of the battery volumes produced currently meet Apple’s standards.”
In what must surely be one of the great 2012 iOSphere understatements, the “unnamed battery vendor is reportedly working to solve the problem as development of Apple’s next iPhone ramps up ahead of an anticipated release later this year.”
Assuming the report is true, Hughes’ comment is missing a few modifiers like “frantically, desperately, screamingly” working to solve the problem. Of course, there are limits: They mustn’t run afoul of Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Code of Conduct, which among other things mandates not working more than, ahem, 60 (as in six-zero) hours a week.
White also found on another Chinese news site, ifeng.com, a post that “suggested Apple might want to launch its next iPhone as soon as the end of August,” according to AppleInsider.
Chinese websites seem to be pretty suggestive. “To suggest” means “to propose” or “evoke” or “imply.” Maybe in this case, ifeng.com “reported” that Apple would announce iPhone 5 between the third week of August and the start of September.
Read the rest here: iPhone 5 rumor rollup for the week ending June 29
