The fact that Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple’s CEO doesn’t seem to have affected the company’s plans for the upcoming iPhone 5, as new reports reveal that shipments of iPhone handsets will almost double for the second half of 2011 compared to 2H 2010.
FBR Capital Markets analyst, Craig Berger suggests that Apple might have higher third quarter production levels up from 23.6 million units to 27.9 million units which represents an increase of almost 33%.
“iPhone builds were revised higher due to an additional 3.1M iPhone 4 builds (to 15.2M units) and due to an additional 1.4M iPhone 5 builds (to 6.8M units). We still see 3M builds planned on the legacy iPhone 3GS to satisfy demands from various US and European carriers calling for a low cost device to compete with Android handsets”, the analyst mentioned earlier this week.
As for Q4, Berger said that Apple will stick to the 30 million units plan, although he’s suggesting that the shipments could rise to almost 35 million iPhones.
“We see most of the [Q4] iPhone production on the iPhone 5 (23M units), as iPhone 4 production drops off dramatically. Apple’s current build plan drives total production to 102M units in calendar 2011, and likely driving about 95M units of sales”, the analyst added.