The company wants suppliers to build 20% more units

Dec 15, 2020 11:45 GMT  ·  By

Apple apparently expects 2021 to be a truly great year for the smartphone market, with the iPhone obviously to spearhead sales worldwide, so the company has reportedly asked suppliers to build no less than 230 million units for the entire year

This is an increase of 20 percent versus the current year, which as we know already, has been quite a nightmare for everybody, not just for the smartphone industry.

However, Apple apparently believes the whole thing would come back to normal next year, so it wants suppliers to build more iPhones, with these numbers said to include both existing and new iPhones.

What this means is Apple also expects the upcoming iPhone 13 to sell strong, with people familiar with the matter recently suggesting no delay would hit the 2021 generation and all models would be here on time, according to the typical schedule.

Strong 5G iPhone demand

A report from Nikkei reveals Apple wants to produce no less than 96 million iPhones in the first half of 2021 alone, which is a year-on-year increase of 30 percent. The company sees strong sales for its 5G models, and Apple wants to make sure it has enough iPhones to meet the demand.

“The planned production for the next quarter and the following quarter have been decided and the outlook is quite bright,” an Apple supplier executive was quote as saying by Nikkei. “The iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max are especially stronger than we estimated, while the demand for iPhone 12 is in line with the forecast, but iPhone 12 mini is a bit sluggish,” the person added.

Needless to say, Apple has remained completely tight-lipped on everything, so for the time being, just take the aforementioned numbers with a healthy dose of skepticism. On the other hand, Apple’s ambitions aren’t necessarily surprising, especially because the company is betting big on its 5G device lineup in the long term.