Add this to the iPhone 5 rumor mill—Apple has reportedly ordered 15 million iPhone 5s from notebook maker Pegatron Technology. The next-generation smartphones are set to start shipping in September, according to DigiTimes.
That would be an aggressive rollout, considering that Pegatron only shipped about four million iPhone 4s in the first quarter of this year, the Taiwanese tech journal reported Tuesday.
Pegatron, which assembles iPhones for Apple along with competitors like Hon Hai Precision Industry's subsidiary Foxconn, has already begun receiving iPhone 5 components from upstream suppliers, DigiTimes reported, citing unnamed sources.
Taiwan-based Pegatron has also begun hiring more workers at its Shanghai, China-based manufacturing plants, according to the journal.
Pegatron, which has largely been squeezed out in the assembly of Apple's iPad tablets and MacBook laptops, may soon receive some business assembling those products for Apple in return for being a loyal friend during a time when iPhones didn't sell as well as expected, the sources said.
The notebook maker apparently "significantly expanded its plants, human power, and equipment, aiming to satisfy orders for 10 million CDMA iPhone 4s," the journal reported. But Pegatron wound up shipping far less than that number in the first quarter, dropping its utilization rate to 50 percent and its gross margin to 1.8 percent for the three-month period.
Pegatron could certainly use increased Apple business. The company recently lost notebook orders from its "major client" Asus, according to DigiTimes.