Insurance For iPhones

Foxconn, the manufacturer of Apple’s next-generation iPhones, plans to build and ship 24 million iPhones before the end of this year.  By contrast, Apple claims to have sold 33 million iPhones total from the phone’s launch in 2007 until the end of 2009.

The fourth-generation iPhone will have a higher-quality touchscreen like the one currently used for HTC’s Hero phone. The new display is said to have more pixels, to allow a wider viewing angle, and to be more readable in sunlight.

The end game of those features: Making the iPhone an acceptable e-reader compared to Amazon’s Kindle, and competing with Android phones that have higher screen resolution than the current iPhone 3G S model.

How will Apple plan to sell so many phones? The most obvious scenario would be to let multiple U.S. carriers, not just AT&T, sell the phones after AT&T’s exclusive contract with Apple expires this year. Lower prices are another possibility, but in the USA carriers are already spending a lot to subsidize phones. Ideally, the new iPhone will be so hot we’ll gladly blow $200 on one.