A pair of reports from Asian trade publication DigiTimes appeared this morning, asserting Apple’s iPhone orders from contract manufacturer Pegatron are on the rise while the company is also looking to source more touch panel modules from Wintek in the following quarter. According to the first story sourced from market watchers, “Apple continues to raise its iPhone orders to Pegatron as well as placing orders for new iPad”.
Pegatron, whose plants are up for inspection by the Fair Labor Association, reportedly found itself under fire over Asustek Zenbook orders, according to a story by Chinese-language Commercial Times (Google translation).
You may also recall that Pegatron is rumored to be keeping its fingers crossed to land manufacturing orders for the so-called iPad mini that the usually credible Wall Street Journal raved about.
The other story has it that “Apple is likely to increase its orders to Wintek in the second quarter if sales of new iPads meet its expectation”. A supply chain source hinted that Wintek is expected to ship 11 million touch modules for iPhones and another seven million units for iPads in the first quarter.
Wintek is one of the Asian component makers supplying Apple with touch panels for the iPad. The company is also sourcing parts from touch panel makers TPK Holding and Chimei Innolux.
Analysts are projecting shipments of 12 million units of the new iPad in the first quarter of this year, which ends March 31, 2012. Apple on its part announced three million shipments of its new iPad during the launch weekend, a new record for tablet sales. The device hit ten major markets two weeks ago and will roll out to an additional 24 countries this coming Friday.
Pegatron, an Asustek spin-off, was founded in January 2007 when Asustek split itself into three companies: Asus, the Unihan Corporation and Pegatron. Pegatron snapped up Unihan in January 2008 and Asus spun off Pegatron as an independent and separate entity in June 2010.
Today, Pegatron’s design team (originally branched from Asustek) helps consumer electronics makers with product development, including market research, conceptualization, product design, materials study and production.
Japanese blog Macotakara reported back in January that Pegatron accounts for as much as 85 percent of iPad production, the remaining 15 percent belonging to Foxconn, Apple’s long-time contract manufacturer. This ratio is similar to the iPhone 4S production, per Macotakara’s sources.