Production of the iPhone 15 is starting, with the production chains of Apple’s Chinese suppliers expected to start in late June. According to reports from the Chinese factories of the new iPhones, it seems that Apple expects incredible sales for its new generation smartphones.
According to a report by ITHome, in particular, Apple will aim to sell 89 million iPhone 15s during 2023 alone. Considering that the iPhone 15 will be announced in September, during the traditional Cupertino end-of-summer keynote, Apple’s prospects appear to be decidedly ambitious, aiming to sell around 30 million iPhones a month between October and December 2023.
For comparison, in 2022 Apple had sold 78 million iPhone 14s between mid-September and the end of December. In other words, iPhone 15 should be an already announced success, with a percentage of units sold equal to 14% more than its predecessor. However, it is difficult to establish what will drive this success: the new generation of iPhoneini, in fact, does not seem to have particularly innovative features compared to those already mounted on the iPhone 14, and even should cost about $200 more on the American market.
In any case, Foxconn will remain the main supplier of Apple, producing a percentage between 50% and 60% of all iPhones ordered by the Cupertino giant. Another 20-25% will instead go to LuxShare, while the remaining 15-20% will be produced by Pegatron. However, it seems that LuxShare and Pegatron will deal exclusively with the two models vanilla of the new iPhones, while iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be made exclusively by Foxconn.
This division, however, confirms Apple’s efforts in diversifying the production of the iPhone 15: even without moving part of the production lines to India, the Bitten Apple would have decided to place orders with several different suppliers to prevent a possible lockdown of the Foxconn factories creates serious supply problems for its smartphones for the winter season, as instead happened for the iPhone 14 and iPhone 13.