5-inch iPhone 6 Could Account for 1/4 of iPhones Shipped in 2014

[PhilSynowiec]

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In recent years, Apple has been falling behind on smartphone screen size, seeing as the iPhone maxes out at 4-inches, while competitors has gone into the 5-inch plus market. This could quite possibly change next year, according to several reports as well as a new report from Digitimes today.


Digitimes Research claims that Apple’s new pre-pay to GT Advanced Technologies of $578 million will fund the company’s sapphire production supply. This boost in capital will allow GT to produce a predicted 33.79-50.56 million iPhones per year, by growing its number of sapphire furnaces.

US$578 million can be used to procure 1,930-2,890 sapphire growing furnaces for a monthly production of 5.28-7.90 million mm of 2-inch-equivalent sapphire ingots, Digitimes Research indicated. Such a volume of sapphire ingots could be used to make screen covers for 33.79-50.56 million 5-inch iPhones a year, accounting for 17.8-26.6% of the estimated 190 million iPhones to be shipped in 2014.

As we all know, Apple uses sapphire for the iSight camera lens, and now the Touch ID sensor for the iPhone 5/5S. There has been a recent shortage of sapphire components, hence Apple’s need to pay a company such at GT Advanced Technologies. Digitimes writes that an estimated 190 million iPhones will be shipped in the year 2014, with 17.8-26.6% of them having 5-inch displays.

 

[DaveM]

If this proves to be true I sure hope they continue to make a smaller version available. "Falling behind" is not the term I would use. More like "having the sense to not jump on the bandwagon" IMHO.