Report: Apple's daily production of foldable iPhones is only "a few hundred" units, and supply may be tight in the initial sales period.

The mass production of Apple's first foldable iPhone is progressing far slower than expected, and supply chain issues are threatening its market performance in the early stages of its launch.

According to Nikkei Asia, citing sources familiar with the supply chain, Apple's stringent quality control standards limit the current daily production of foldable iPhones to just "a few hundred" units, far below the tens of thousands of units needed for large-scale commercial shipments. Apple and its suppliers are working hard to ramp up production, but if they cannot significantly increase output in the short term, the model will face a severe shortage of channel inventory when it officially goes on sale.

Strict quality control measures hampered production capacity, and additional verification procedures in August delayed mass production plans.

According to Nikkei Asia, citing a supply chain manager familiar with the matter, Apple has extremely high quality requirements for the foldable iPhone and added an extra round of trial production before the official mass production in August, causing the commercial mass production timeline to be delayed by several weeks. "Currently, daily production is only a few hundred units, and this initial capacity is insufficient to meet market demand," the person said.

Two sources familiar with the matter told Nikkei Asia that Apple added a verification process in August specifically to ensure that the foldable iPhone could be mass-produced according to its established design specifications. This additional procedure directly delayed the planned commercial production.

Apple's quality control standards for foldable screen products are significantly higher than those of competitors like Samsung. This is reflected in testing requirements under more extreme conditions, a higher number of folding cycles, and stricter specifications for screen flatness. Another source familiar with the matter stated, "Screen surface flatness and hinge performance are the core details that Apple currently focuses on to improve yield rates."

The annual production target is 8 million to 10 million units, but the daily progress is severely out of sync.

According to a previous report by Nikkei Asia, Apple has set a production target of 8 to 10 million foldable iPhones this year, hoping to boost the market and drive revenue growth with this new form factor.

However, industry executives pointed out to Nikkei Asia that achieving the aforementioned annual production target typically requires producing tens of thousands of phones per day. With current production capacity of only a few hundred units per day, Apple is unlikely to meet its annual production plan and will face a prolonged supply shortage in the initial sales period if it cannot accelerate its ramp-up efforts.

Apple and its suppliers are currently working hard to increase daily production capacity, but existing testing and verification procedures have caused delays to the overall plan. Nikkei Asia points out that if the current situation does not improve, the inventory supply in distribution channels may be extremely limited when the foldable iPhone goes on sale.

Industry Background: Memory shortages coupled with a competitive landscape give Apple a relative advantage.

The production capacity constraints of foldable iPhones, coupled with the overall pressure on the global smartphone market, have further increased uncertainty. IDC's latest forecast shows that driven by the large-scale construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure, there is an unprecedented shortage of memory and electronic components globally. Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline by 16.7% this year, and the memory shortage will drive up the average selling price of smartphones by approximately 27.6%.

In contrast, Apple, with its stronger bargaining power and higher-end product portfolio, has been relatively less affected. IDC data shows that from April to June this year, Apple's global market share rose to 20.2%, a significant increase from 16.3% in the same period last year.

It is worth noting that, in order to optimize memory resource allocation and marketing resource investment, Apple will focus on the three highest-end iPhone models this year, and the release of the standard iPhone has been postponed to next spring.

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