A recent report suggested that Apple may be planning to debut a new iPhone phablet as soon as this coming May ahead of its iPhone 6 launch in September or October. While it seems increasingly likely that Apple is indeed working on more than one new iPhone model following a number of solid reports to that effect, the odds of one of the new iPhones launching in May were just severely decreased.
According to a new report from Digitimes that cites unnamed industry sources, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has just landed a contract with Apple that will see the chip fabricator begin producing Touch ID sensors for Apple’s next-generation iPhones in the second quarter this year. Unless Apple is having its fingerprint scanners for the iPhone phablet produced elsewhere, it is almost certainly not planning to launch the device in May.
TSMC also produced Touch ID sensors for Apple’s iPhone 5s handset, which debuted last year.
The report states that TSMC will handle the fingerprint scanners as well as the backend wafer level-chip scale packaging process. That process had been outsourced to third parties for the iPhone 5s Touch ID sensors according to the report, but TSMC will handle it in-house this time around in order to ensure that it can meet Apple’s demands for production volume.
