'iPhone 15 Ultra' Won't Be Exclusively Assembled by Foxconn

Wednesday December 28, 2022 6:19 am PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple has enlisted Luxshare to assemble the iPhone 15 Pro Max alongside Foxconn next year, according to Taiwanese research firm TrendForce. It's unclear what percentage of orders Luxshare will fulfill, but the move will help to reduce Apple's risks of relying on a single manufacturer following workplace issues at Foxconn in recent months.

iPhone 14 Pro Purple Side Perspective Feature Purple
Rumors suggest that there will be increased differentiation between the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. As a result, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Pro Max could potentially be renamed the iPhone 15 Ultra, like the Apple Watch Ultra.

Last month, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Luxshare and Pegatron had each obtained about 10% of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max orders from Foxconn, but he noted that mass shipments would not begin until late December at the earliest. TrendForce said this will serve as a trial run for Apple diversifying its iPhone production partners.

Foxconn has experienced "significant strain" since October due to COVID-19 outbreaks at its factory in Zhengzhou, China, resulting in significantly reduced production capacity for iPhone 14 Pro models, according to TrendForce. The research firm said China's supply chain has also started to experience a labor shortage this month as the Chinese government eased COVID-19 restrictions, leading to increased spread of the virus.

Due to the production issues and economic headwinds, TrendForce has lowered its iPhone shipments forecast for the first quarter of 2023 to 47 million units, which would be a year-over-year decline of 22%, according to the research firm.

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Tags: Foxconn, TrendForce, Luxshare

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Top Rated Comments

TheYayAreaLiving ?️

10 months ago

I want my iPhone 15 Pro Max/Ultra to come from India, not China.

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)

1738

One of the things Steve Jobs did really well is make the product line up easy to understand and interpret with naming conventions. Now every model has a different buzz word after the product name but there's no consistency of naming conventions between the different product line ups. There's Plus, Max, Air, mini, SE, Ultra, Pro, these terms don't translate between different products. In the iOS lineup its "mini" in the Mac lineup is "Air" The Pro lineup translates pretty well, but then there's Ultra which is rumored to now be an additional naming convention on the iOS side.

There's that iconic story of Steve Jobs coming back to Apple and drawing a cross on the white board to create 4 squares and writing "consumer desktop, consumer laptop, pro desktop, pro laptop" in those squares. It's literally as simple as that. Yeah, the product lines aren't as simple as they were in the Steve Jobs days but a naming convention for consumer and pro products could easily still work, even if you offer 2 sizes of each. I think it would help people interpret the product lineup better.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Spock

I am really not a fan of Apples naming standards over the past few years, reminds me to much of the old Android phones. I miss when it was just the iPhone and iPhone Plus.

Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Macintosh Quadra 840av

Yea here come the posts "How do I know where my iPhone was manufactured" and the returns for the ones that were from a location with more issues

Yup, like the Intel vs Qualcomm modems. It was so stupid. Real-world performance was no different and no one noticed any actual difference. But for a small group of nerds, it seemed make or break for them.

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)