According to one of Apple’s suppliers, there will be a major delay to the production of the upcoming iPhone 12 range, likely resulting in it hitting the shelves later than the usual September release date.
In an earnings call, CEO of Wi-Fi chip supplier Broadcom said the current pandemic has caused delays in its production cycle, meaning there would be a knock-on effect for “a large North American mobile phone” company, alluding to Apple in a way he’s been known to do before. This “major product cycle delay,” he said, would bump expected revenues back to the next quarter.
Of course, this doesn’t exactly give us precise details on how it will affect Apple – will this be a one month delay or three? Whatever the case, it’s clear the company won’t be able to assemble the millions of iPhones needed for launch without its usual supply of Wi-Fi chips. It’s likely that other suppliers are suffering similar delays at the moment, too.
Apple has released iPhones like clockwork for many years, both announcing and shipping in the month of September every year. One notable exception was in 2017 when it announced the iPhone 8 and iPhone X simultaneously in September, but the iPhone X wasn’t made available until a couple of months later.
It’s possible Apple will follow suit again this year, if it has a limited supply of chips in time for the usual September keynote reveal. We could see the regular iPhone 12 models ship immediately, with a wait until October or November for iPhone 12 Pro. Equally, Apple could decide to postpone the whole thing until the fourth quarter to avoid a long wait between announcement and availability.
It’s widely expected Apple will release four variants of the iPhone 12 this year. We reported on leaks in March that purported to confirm a whole host of interesting details about the upcoming product announcements, including a bigger battery, a smaller notch, and a return to the flat edges of the iPhone 4 design.