300,000 Foxconn workers ensure that its churning out 500,000 iPhone 5s daily

Waiting times for the iPhone 5s have recently gone down from 2 to 3 weeks in some areas to just 3 to 5 days, as Apple's biggest manufacturing partner, Foxconn, has tasked some 300,000 employees with the sole purpose of churning out iPhone 5s units.

The report, coming from the Wall Street Journal, claims that Hon Hai, a.k.a Foxconn, now has 100 individual production lines dedicated to the effort, and has reached its maximum output capacity of 500,000 units, per day. That's right, half a million iPhone 5s... per day! The WSJ cites a Foxconn executive, claiming that each conveyor belt needs about 600 workers to handle all the assembly work that an iPhone 5s goes through – a figure that was significantly lower during the production of the iPhone 5:


Despite these downright mind-blowing capacities, we're told that Foxconn is actually wary of expanding their output. This is a result of Apple's bid to diversify its supply partners, which has caused speculation that smaller local rivals like Pegatron and Wistron could snatch away a share of the pile of cash that Foxconn makes by working with Apple, estimated at 40% of its total revenue.

Source: WSJ