Pegatron expects to ship 10 million CDMA iPhones in 2011, say sources
Pegatron Technology internally expects its Apple CDMA iPhone shipments to reach 10 million units in 2011 and the company has recently started to gear up and is installing new equipment as well as hiring about 10,000 …
Context & Ripple Effects
DigiTimes' supply-chain sourcing has Pegatron reportedly expecting 10 million Apple CDMA iPhone shipments in 2011, with the company said to be installing new equipment and hiring around 10,000 workers for the ramp — all flagged as internal expectations rather than confirmed orders. A CDMA build matters because it would put the iPhone on carriers outside the GSM ecosystem Apple has served since launch.
The story's spread beyond DigiTimes — including a MacRumors pickup asking whether Foxconn will join Pegatron on CDMA iPhone production — frames the real question as whether Apple is cultivating a second assembler. Every claim here carries a 'reportedly' caveat: the shipment target, the hiring, and the capacity investment are all unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- Pegatron's reported 10,000-worker hire and new-equipment install commit the company to CDMA-scale capacity ahead of any confirmed order book, betting its own capital on the rumored 10-million-unit target.
- If the MacRumors-sourced possibility of Foxconn sharing CDMA production holds, Apple would have two qualified assemblers for the same device line instead of one.
Second-order effects
- A second qualified assembler dilutes Foxconn's leverage over Apple's assembly pricing and allocation, pushing both suppliers to compete on yield and cost per unit.
- Component and test-equipment vendors tied to the CDMA bill of materials gain a second high-volume customer ramp to sell into during 2011.
Third-order effects
- A confirmed Pegatron role would mark Apple moving from single-sourced assembly toward a multi-vendor manufacturing base, making contract-manufacturing scale itself a competitive battleground among Taiwanese ODMs.
- A CDMA iPhone would extend Apple's carrier strategy beyond the GSM operators it launched with, forcing carrier partners to compete for iPhone exclusivity terms rather than taking them as given.
The trend: Apple's hardware supply chain is shifting from a single dominant assembler toward competitively bid, multi-source contract manufacturing as iPhone volumes force capacity diversification.