Apple’s iPhone 8 May Be Delayed

Many people are anxiously waiting for Apple to release its 10th anniversary iPhone this year, the iPhone 8. According to one Wall Street firm however, the phone may be delayed.

Firm Cowen and Company wrote a note to investors that it released on Wednesday that said production issues with the phone’s fingerprint reader is causing the delay. The firm cited that the tech giant is having problems putting the fingerprint reader under the new glass panels expected on Apple’s anniversary phone.

Cowen stated, “”Fingerprint yield issues remain unresolved (integrating the fingerprint under glass creates a much higher yield hurdle because the entire display must be scrapped rather than just the fingerprint module). While still possible, Apple will have to put the fingerprint on the back [of the phone.] It appears likely that Apple will slightly delay contract manufacturing assembly timelines by 4-6 weeks to buy more time to fix the issues and make a final decision.”
Apple is supposed to launch the phone this September, as well as release updates to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7S Plus.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, with KGI Securities, the iPhone 8 may not launch until October the earliest, maybe even November.

Apple just released earnings on Tuesday and saw a small drop in iPhone sales. Sales for the iPhone in the fiscal second quarter were 50.8 million units, while analysts had expected 52.2 million.

For the fiscal first quarter, the company reported the highest number of iPhone units ever sold at 78.3 million.

CEO Tim Cook said, “Where the iPhone 7 Plus did well, we didn’t perform as well on some of the previous generation iPhones. What I now believe is that we’ll improve a bit more during this current quarter, not back to growth but improve — but make more progress.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and have not been compensated for this article.