My white iPhone has a hairline crack by the headphone jack. It's been treated with kid gloves in the 2 weeks I've had it - and I never even used headphones.

jfj

@dogcow: I think 14-16M units sold-not shipped like MS likes to do with Zune and 360-by the end of the year.

Leonard Nimrod

@edblor: First, your estimate doesn't include any of the 3G or original iphones already sold. Secondly, Apple's estimates are always low so they can beat them. Thirdly, if they really want to do 1% or greater (which they probably want to do for MW marketing value) they now have to use 2008's numbers which I think is over 12M units.

Finally, and this one is mainly to the author, the ramping up is because Apple still has ~60 more countries to continue selling to this year while continuing to sell to the current 22 which have yet to get their fill and the the next batch of ~20 countries hitting later this month. This ramp up will probably only be temporary thorough the end of the year.

Leonard Nimrod

@Noobs-R-Us: Ordinarily, there are. However, right now, they're all working on "cleaning" up the Yangtze for the Olympic Games.

OMG! Ponies!

@edblor: TechCrunch claims Apple's run rate for the 3G will be 40 million/year.
I'm guessing 15 million by the end of 2008 (shipped).

dogcow

Yeah, because you simply can't get a replacement and maybe even a discount or free item if you attach an angry letter; yep, they sure won't care if you have a faulty unit or not.

i_9

@regexp: guess you've never been to macrumors forums, or howardforums, or apple's own support forums. these boards are rife with QC issues. 15+% of macrumors readers alone have cracks in their phones.

mcdj

WTF is 800,00?
if it is 800, then the quality will be flawless!

Ariel_Wollinger

I don't know why people give diseased water rats such a hard time.

waterwizard

Quality is overrated! What we need is more crap, not better crap.

misterwho

That's gotta be a per MONTH number, not per week. Come on! there's not enough Chinese people to make so many per week!

Noobs-R-Us

Do we have any firm sources for the quality issues? or is this just innuendos and cheap rumors?

I've seen no further (or any for that matter) proof that there are massive issues with quality.

(oh I forgot this is gizmodo - innuendo and cheap rumors is all you got)

regexp

I call BS.

Build-quality aside, the Steve estimated 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, with roughly 19 weeks left in 2008, is this reporting that Apple will sell (or ship) 15 million more this year??

Yeah, whatevs!

edblor

@fogel1492: I blame Brad Pitt, Angalina Jolie, Madonna and the rest of Hollywoods Child-napper Brigade.

They keep stealing Americas best and brightest from the assembly lines.

This needs to be stopped.

doobiebros2two

I'd be a lot more confident with that ramp-up if the design/internals were exactly the same as last years model-I'm sure they worked out all the production issues with that model. But the 3G has new shit inside and out-wonder if they've really shaken out all the production bugs yet.

Then again, Motorola shipped, what, 50 million RAZRs in 20 months? (Although the build quality on my wife's RAZR wasn't that great either, come to think :p )

dogcow

@doobiebros2two: Super lollerskates!

You would think that overworked and underpaid employees in India working over 60 hours a week would make great products. Strange.

fogel1492

Stop whining. There's only so many Chinese people you can get to incubate the white iPhones so that they'll hatch.

OMG! Ponies!

a whopping 800,00 !!!!? Quality control!!!

Quality over quantity

Wegmans

800,00...oh yeah, they're paying attention.

dukemang

Opps, they already use Foxconn...

hmm.

T-man

Somebody get Nintendo Foxconn's phone number.

T-man

800,00?

Yeah I'm gonna be like that.

It's called quality control.

doobiebros2two

@karmaghost: LOL, Dude, STFU

snitch29

800,000 a week? Mine on backorder must be #800,001.

karmaghost

@dogcow: Well don't you think is better keeping it there for rainy days than flushing it down the toilet by buying bullshiet companies like, Danger or yahoo or even worse My Space

snitch29

With the number of iPhones they're pumping out, getting a replacement wouldn't be a problem suckers.

thexile

@snitch29:
The real question though, is WTF is Apple doing with all that cash just sitting there gaining crap interest? At some point, stockholders are gonna want to know why Apple isn't re-investing/buying back stock/buying companies/etc... doing SOMETHING with the cash, besides just letting it sit there.

dogcow

800,000 iphones a week, all i got to say is, Damm.
Dude Apple already got $20.3 billion in cash, a little less than Microsoft $23.8 billion, but if they're going to build them at that paste i can see the cash pile stocking up quick an passing Msft in a couple of quarters

snitch29

@regexp: Multiple reports of worker abuse and poor quality controlled can be found all over the interweb. Just search "Foxconn Criticisms" and you can find thousands of incidents.

Also Apple considers a sale as getting money for their product. Not the product making its way into an end consumers hands. So when major carriers buy 100,000's of iPhones apple considers these sales even though no customers have recieved one.

fogel1492

Another reason to stick with the first gen!

Joseph

ooh, and I made up all of those numbers if anyone couldn't tell.. no sources, so don't quote me.. just trying to illustrate a point.

drierp

That's more than 1 a second, 24x7..

And the rate alone shouldn't lead to quality problems other than to imply that they're making 800k with the staff/equipment that was designed for 500k for example..

They very well could have 10k people building them, which would be 80 phones per week per employee.. That doesn't sound unreasonable..

800k/week with 2% failure = 784k good units.. So even if the line was designed for 500k/wk with 0.1% failure (499.5k good), pushing it to this level gives an additional 284.5k per week.. Sure it sounds bad to have an error rate 20x what it "should be".. but you also have 1 million extra phones available per month!

Either way, guessing is a bad game.. As long as Apple replaces any defective units, and we don't end up with a RROD issue in 9-18 months from now, who really cares?

drierp

There's a reason the apple store gets iphones delivered every day.

gamecrazychris

@snitch29: Yeah, I was kinda hoping for a stock buyback or dividend :p

dogcow

I had to take my first gen iPhone in for a replacement about a week after the release of the iPhone 3G. If anyone here has had their iPhone or iPod swapped out before you know that they store replacement iPod/iPhones in the drawers behind the genius bars.

They had to go in the back of the store to get my replacement iPhone because the drawers behind the genius bar were stuffed full of replacement 3G iPhones, hundreds of them, I couldn't believe how many replacement 3G iPhones they had and that it had displaced all the first gen replacement iPhones and replacement iPods.

It really gave me the impression that they were expecting to swap out a whole lot of 3G iPhones very quickly after launch and do it as quickly and quietly as possible.

jmckee

@dogcow:

My thoughts exactly. The reason Microsoft's cash on hand is so "low" is because they've bought back something like $50 billion in stocks since 2006. What's Apple doing with their cash besides bragging that they have almost as much cash on hand as Microsoft?

Since Apple has so much loot, maybe they can pay back Gates the $150 mil he loaned them with interest.

seizure

I have to get a new one due to one of my speakers not working.

theshortguy

is Foxconn claiming they are shipping out 800,000 units a week?

Sure, one could say they could produce 800,000 in a week, but can they really claim to put that many units out into distribution per week?

This sounds a bit iffy, and I agree with the consensus of quality over quantity. Who would want a refurbished iPhone? Especially when you paid for a brand new one.

CmdrHunt

I can attest to this--after weeks of waiting for my 3G to come in, the first unit I got had 7 pieces of dust/lint under the glass.

Pathetic.

oopsIsharted

It's funny how Chinese people in China make the iPhone but apple doesn't sell it to china. LOL

mandeep510

Sounds like bullshit to me..

bonedog73

@theshortguy:
That is probably because there is only one speaker. The other one is a microphone :p

dogcow

@OMG! Ponies!: Yangtze Springs naturally purified spring water? Staright from the source with every mineral you'll need for the rest of your life. Use sparingly.

qbrad

I would so call and complain about this as it's obviously a quality issue, but my 3G reception is so bad on my iPhone 3G I can't make a call....

dcdttu

I'd like to know the actual cost of building the unit.

Y2KGTP

Its says quality "Might" be an issue.

And monkeys "Might" Fly outta my butt.

FUD...Plain and simple.

The real news is OMG they are selling a lot of phones.

Apple on its way to being the biggest name in cell phones!

Wowwzers

@T-man: its not the manufacture that is stopping the flow of nintendo's products its their policy of stopping the flow to create a buzz around a product, ie it must be good as it has sold out.

ichi1

I replaced my 3G the day after getting it as there were a few pixels out on the screen. Met with a "Genius"...replaced next day. Funny thing is they just wanted the phone back, not the accessories that came with it, but gave me a brand new one with box and accessories.

smcguinness