Report says that the white iPhone 4 will remain in short supply after launch

During Steve Jobs press conference the other day, it might have been overlooked by many that Mr. Jobs had announced that the delayed white iPhone 4 would launch at the end of the month. Even after the launch, the white version of the phone will remain in short supply. A report in a Chinese-language newspaper put the blame for the delay on a company in China known as Lens Technology. A worker in the QC department of the company says that they are still trying to work out the thickness of paint needed to make sure that there is enough space for the digitizer overlay and that the phone has the right level of white that Apple desires. Each machine owned by Lens Technology can only cut three iPhone 4 glass covers per hour and the company right now can meet only half of Apple's demand for the handset. The entire process is long and tedious. Engadget describes it as "developing the tooling, cutting the raw material (mainly sourced from Germany, Switzerland and Japan), fine-milling using CNC (computed numerically controlled) machines, sanding the edges, polishing, strengthening, cleaning, coating, screen printing, baking, anti-shatter treatment, assembling, and packaging." Jobs himself said that after the white iPhone 4 launches at the end of July, the model will only come out in a trickle while production is ramped up. You might recall that last month, the Cupertino based firm said that the white iPhone 4 has "proven more challenging to manufacture than expected." And it also gets dirty more easily.

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source: AppleInsider