Apple is preparing for strong iPhone sales, at least that’s what Japan Display’s new CEO suggests in an interview with Reuters. He told the news agency, that Japan Display’s biggest client (Apple) is increasing orders ahead of the highly anticipated iPhone 6s launch.
While he didn’t mention the iPhone maker by name, he said:
“They’re coming to us with more orders, saying ‘give us more, give us more’. They keep increasing,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“Confirming” earlier rumours of Force Touch being added as a feature to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Mitsuru Homma said, “There’s difficult technology being used . . . But I think ramp-up is going well.”
In a report published yesterday, market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech looked at the upgrade opportunity Apple has and concluded that an iPhone replacement opportunity is certainly not imminent considering earlier upgrade patterns: 32% of US iPhone 5s sales were generated after the launch of the iPhone 6, and this number jumped to 36% in China after September 2014.
In an interesting turn of events, well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doesn’t believe Force Touch will be the key selling point of the iPhone 6s and published a conservative iPhone sales forecast for this holiday quarter, saying that sales may hit zero or negative growth. It remains to be seen whether the upgraded camera with 4K video recording, the faster processor, Force Touch, and other software improvements will accelerate the upgrade cycle and sales this forthcoming year.
