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ArnoldRimmer on 26 July 2017
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Miyamotoo said:
ArnoldRimmer said:

That at least makes a little more sense, but I still think that doesn't really fully explain things. If the only reason that Nintendo can't manufacture more units is that they're battling with Apple for certain parts, why is that problem suddenly magically solved by fall? Does Apple suddenly stop manufacturing their devices by that time?

One might argue that Apple usually introduces their next iPhone revision by about that time, and will thus probably stop manufacturing the current revision soon - but how could Nintendo know that unlike the current revision, the next revision of the iPhone will not use the parts Nintendo is battling for with Apple?

Specifically availability of memory parts were problem on market currently, and infos suggested that problem will be solved.

The bold part is very vague and just claims that this problem will be solved, but it doesn't give any explanation why that should be the case.

Anyway, I googled around and found some more information on this.

Indeed, there are reports particularly mentioning supply issues for the 32GB flash memory chip produced by Toshiba:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/31/nintendo-fights-parts-shortage-for-switch-wsj.html

 

But according to the teardowns by iFixit and techinsights:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nintendo+Switch+Teardown/78263

http://techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/nintendo-switch-teardown/

 

...the 32GB flash memory chip was placed on a separate storage board, probably in order to be able to use flash memory chips from multiple manufacturers and with different capacities. Apparently, Nintendo is already using different flash memory chips from at least two different companies (Toshiba and Samsung):

http://techinsights.com/techinsights/img/teardown/nintendo-switch/main-unit-2.jpg

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/BfRaEw2VLngWYsob.huge

 

So those eMMC flash memory chips do not really explain the supply problems; the Switch hardware is by design not limited to one particular flash memory chip that might have supply issues, it is compatible with various flash memory chips from multiple companies. So getting a few million eMMC flash memory chips can't be an unsolveable problem for Nintendo.

So please, give me another, better explanation why Nintendo should suddenly be able to significantly ramp up production in Q4. The explanations so far do not sound very convincing to me.