The news comes from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, which has previously been hit and miss with Apple rumours but what makes the latest whispers more interesting is that all the suppliers mentioned are based in Taiwan – EDN’s home ground – and have been linked with the iWatch before.
The paper says that Quanta Computer will handle manufacture of the smartwatch itself, while Richtek will supply the chipsets and TPK the touchpanel sapphire glass screens.
Furthermore, a report claims that Flexium Interconnect, Zhen Ding Technology Holding and Career Technology have all dispatched their flexible PCB samples (printed circuit board) to Cupertino for validation.
This report goes on to mention fairly large amounts of money these suppliers are willing to invest in order to ramp up production capacities for 2014 (Zhen Ding with $100 million, Flexium Interconnect with anywhere between $49.6-66.12 million and Career Technology with about $33 million) as far as Apple’s products are concerned.
Sunburn detector
One of the most interesting rumours points to the iWatch including a UV light exposure sensor. What this will do is measure the amount of exposure you’re receiving from the sun. According to the source, the device will include a special chip to measure this:
These chips measure UV exposure to aid those with elevated risk of sunburn or just a general concern about excessive sun exposure, and we believe they may be of appealing to OEMs looking to differentiate in a crowded market. To that end, while these products have seen little public hype thus far, we believe SLAB has a win in Apple’s upcoming iWatch (late 2H14 or early 2015).
Could we be seeing a double-header release with iPhone 6?
