Hon Hai Garners Apple's Order for iPhone CDMA Edition

Taipei, Oct. 27, 2010 (CENS)--The Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., now the world's largest EMS (electronic manufacturing service) provider, is reportedly going to ship the newest CDMA edition of iPhone 4 to Apple Inc. in 2011, according to industry sources.

The sources noted that Apple's order for the CDMA iPhone 4 has been shared evenly between Hon Hai and its Taiwanese peer Pegatron Corp., with Hon Hai's shipment of the device projected at 15 million units for 2011. Apple will launch the phone in early 2011 in cooperation with a couple of telecom companies as Verizon and China Telecom, in a bid to further boost its smartphone market share through exploring the CDMA segment.

According to Apple's latest financial statement, sales of iPhone 4G surged 91% quarter-on-quarter to 14.1 million units in the third quarter of this year. The growth rate was even stronger than the average of 64% of overall sales in the global smartphone market. Therefore, market observers are quite optimistic about sales of CDMA iPhone 4, opining that the success of Apple's iPhone in the global market for smartphones will facilitate the vendor's foray into the CDMA segment.

Besides, they also based their optimism on the service of Apple App Store, which is accessible from each unit of iPhone to provide users with more than 300,000 different kinds of application software at present. The feature will also help CDMA iPhone to draw consumers.

Institutional investors have projected total sales of iPhone smartphones at 50 million units for this year and 75 million units for 2011. As the biggest contract supplier for Apple, Hon Hai will surely benefit from the hot-sellers.

Noteworthily, Hon Hai Group has poured US$299 million into construction of a factory in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, southwestern China, to engage in production of Apple's iPad tablets.