A report on Monday sent Apple’s stock down by 1.6% after revealing that Apple has purportedly cut iPhone X orders by 20 million for the current quarter, or half of the initial estimates. Apple, the same report said, would make 30 million non-iPhone X handsets during the period, including the iPhone 8, a number that hasn’t changed.
A day later, one of Apple’s iPhone X suppliers went on record to say the order cuts aren’t “that great.”
“Our understanding is that it is not that great,” Murata vice chairman Yoshitaka Fujita said when asked about the report Nikkei ran on Monday.
It’s surprising to see a supplier go on record about its dealings with Apple. But that’s all Fujita had to say on the matter, according to Reuters. The exec did not reveal any other details about Murata’s dealings with Apple for the iPhone X
Murata is one of the two makers of flexible printed circuit boards (FPCB) for the iPhone X, and a report in mid-October said the Japanese company was dealing with certain yield issues that may have contributed to the iPhone X’s delay. Ming-Chi Kuo’s report at the time said Murata was replaced by Career, the second supplier for antenna FPCB, as Murata would not be able to solve its issues earlier than the second quarter of 2018.
That said, Fujita did confirm what many other reports have been saying for a few weeks now. Apple is indeed reducing iPhone X orders for the current quarter.
