According to a report from DigiTimes, a lack of OLED panels could spell a long wait for those wanting to get their hands on the iPhone 8 this September.
The upcoming flagship smartphone, expected to launch in September with new design features like an edge-to-edge display, wireless charging, and OLED display, could be limited to just 3-4 million devices available by the time of Apple’s big product announcement. This is due to low yield rates from the manufacturers behind the new display panels.
Apple typically sells more than 200 million iPhones a year, with around 10 million of last year’s sales coming over the iPhone 7 launch weekend alone. Apple is expected to ship somewhere in the region of 50-60 million iPhones with OLED displays before the end of the year, making 3-4 million look like quite a small number – production will have to really ramp up if that target is to be met.
Customers won’t be happy if they have to wait weeks or even months to get a shiny new iPhone, so hopefully Apple has something up its sleeve to resolve this manufacturing issue over the summer before the iPhone 8 launch.
Of course, this year Apple looks set to deliver three new iPhones to choose from, including an iPhone 7S and 7S Plus alongside the all-new iPhone 8. Only the 8 is rumored to be using OLED panels, so we’d expect the others to be relatively easy to pick up at launch.