NYT on the iPhone 5 Component Thing

Brian X. Chen, reporting for the NYT:

Apple does appear to be cutting back on orders for its latest iPhone from its manufacturing partners, as Nikkei of Japan and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier. Paul Semenza, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, a research firm that follows the display market, said that for January, Apple had expected to order 19 million displays for the iPhone 5 but cut the order to 11 million to 14 million. Mr. Semenza said these numbers came from sources in the supply chain, the companies that make components for Apple products.

The reduction in orders for screens could be related to excess inventory, or because consumer demand for the iPhone 5 just was not as strong as Apple had predicted, Mr. Semenza said. “Certainly, demand from Apple to the display makers seems to have been corrected pretty significantly,” he said.

A few differences between this report and yesterday’s from the WSJ and Nikkei (all in the NYT’s favor):

  • Specific numbers.
  • A named source.
  • A range for the drop, which, even in the worst case scenario, is not “half”.
  • No assumption that the drop is definitely attributable to lower than expected consumer demand for the iPhone 5. It could be, but might be inventory or something else.

★ Monday, 14 January 2013