Jason Snell, Macworld:

This is one of those areas where Apple may be the victim of its own success. The iPhone is so popular a product that Apple can’t include any technology or source any part if it can’t be made more than 200 million times a year. If the supplier of a cutting-edge part Apple wants can only provide the company with 50 million per year, it simply can’t be used in the iPhone. Apple sells too many, too fast.

And:

Most cutting-edge technologies are going to cost more and initially be available in limited quantities, unless Apple makes huge investments in equipment and manufacturing and corners the world’s supply of those parts, which it has done on more than one occasion.

Apple’s has to balance discriminators against practicality, bleeding edge tech that can help the latest iPhone stand above existing phones against the problems that come trying to buy that bleeding edge tech in adequate and reliable quantities.

[Via DF]