A new report on iPhone production at Foxconn does an amazing job of putting demand for Apple’s latest iPhone in perspective. The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday issued some insights into Foxconn’s iPhone production that really help illustrate how much work is involved with building and shipping the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. According to The Journal’s unnamed sources, which are said to be executives at Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai, Foxconn has 100 production lines, 600 people per line and a total of more than 300,000 workers dedicated solely to building the iPhone 5s — and that’s just at one factory in Zhengzhou, China. How many iPhone 5s handsets can all those people build? According to the report, they’re pumping out a staggering 500,000 iPhone 5s units each day.
To help put that remarkable figure in perspective, consider this: According to data from market research firm Strategy Analytics, Motorola only managed to sell 500,000 Moto X phones during the third quarter this year. The phone was first released on August 23rd, so it was available for more than a month in Q3.
In other words, Apple has more iPhone 5s handsets built each day than the Moto X sold in over one month.
One anonymous executive also noted that the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5 were easier to build than the iPhone 5s, which makes it even more impressive that Foxconn is managing to achieve the kind of output described in the report.
“For the iPhone 5C or the iPhone 5, we only have 500 workers per production line as the assembly procedure is less complicated,” the Hon Hai executive told WSJ. “Although the market had concerns over demand for the new iPhone before its launch, our Zhengzhou site’s production capacity for iPhones has continued to grow over the past two years.”
Another executive noted that Foxconn’s production of 500,000 iPhone 5s handsets each day is the highest daily output the company has ever achieved for a single smartphone model.
