Pegatron Technology, a Taiwan based notebook manufacturer, is reported to have received an order for the production of 15 million iPhone 5s from Apple and is geared up to start shipping in September 2011, according to inside sources from component makers. Pegatron has declined to comment on the issue of its cooperation with its clients in response to the reports.
The company had to significantly expand its human power, manufacturing plants and equipment in order to fulfill the orders for 10 million CDMA iPhone 4 units as per its commitment to Apple. However, as the sales of Apple’s CDMA iPhone 4s were below expectations in the first quarter of 2011, less than 4 million CDMA iPhone 4 units were shipped by Pegatron which caused the utilization rate of the company to drop to 50% and its gross margin dropped to 1.8% in the quarter.
According to the sources, because the iPhone 5 is not much of an upgrade over the iPhone 4 it is already set to be shipped around September this year, and Pegatron has already started acquiring components for its Shanghai plant along with a major increase in its workforce at the plant. Even as Pegatron has received the orders for the upcoming iPhone, the company is also aggressively trying to get additional orders for iPads and MacBooks from Apple.
However, as the existing makers of these devices are protecting their orders, there hasn’t been any progress for Pegatron, although considering the separation of risks, some of the market analysts believe that Pegatron will have a chance to get a small order for iPads in 2012.
After the company has lost notebook orders from one of its major clients, Asustek Computer, Pegatron is aggressively working towards getting more notebook orders from Acer at the moment and analysts have estimated that Pegatron will be able to get notebook orders for more than six million units for the second half of 2012, an increase from the two million units it currently makes.
As far as the drop in the shipments for PS3s is concerned, even as Sony has already released information about an upcoming PS4, sources are still conservative about the shipments of the new gaming console as the gaming market continues to be strongly impacted by the rise of tablets and other such online devices.
