Apple has a yield problem — and it’s Romeo and Juliet’s fault, it seems
Taipei — Apple has a yield problem. Fixed-income traders can turn away now, there’s nothing for you to see here. The yields I’m talking about are production yields, and Apple is struggling to boost them quickly enough to ship a device that accounts for more than 60% of annual revenue. Cobbling together various media reports, it seems the key sensors for Apple’s fancy new facial recognition feature are harder to make than first thought, and its suppliers haven’t been able to improve production efficiency quickly enough. That’s a failure for Apple. Manufacturing can be summarised by a simple equation: Output rate = capacity * yield Let’s use baking cookies as an analogy. Your inputs are flour, butter and sugar, and your key equipment is an oven. If you bake 100 cookies, but 75 of them are burnt then your yield is 25%. If you’re catering for a party and need 80 cookies, then you can either do four rounds of baking, buy more ovens to make larger batches (which takes time and money) or s...
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