Apple plans increased differentiation between ‘iPhone 15 Pro’ and ‘iPhone 15 Ultra’ as Luxshare joins assembly chain

The operation of Foxconn’s major manufacturing base in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou has been affected by a local COVID-19 outbreak since this October. As a result, the capacity utilization rate of the base has yet to risen above the level of 70%. The outbreak in Zhengzhou was at its worst just as Apple was trying to ramp up sales of the new iPhone models for this year (i.e., the iPhone 14 series) to a peak. Furthermore, the new Pro models have been in high demand, so Apple has kept raising their share in the overall iPhone production. Hence, Foxconn as the sole assembler of the new Pro models has been under significant strain. Besides the Zhengzhou base, Foxconn is also drawing support from its other major base located in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. However, this move still not enough to bring an immediate relief to the current capacity crunch. Given this situation, TrendForce has corrected down its projection on the total shipments of all iPhone 14 models in 2022 to 78.1 million units.