Apple needs the iPhone to go out on October 27 so that it can go into the Christmas stockings of extremely rich spoilt kids.

Financial services company Raymond James thinks the iPhone X might come much, much later, around December. But to make matters worse that is the time that the orders are possible and it might be a few months after that the iPhone X will ship.  This means that the lucrative christmas market will have come and gone.

Raymond James’ chip analyst Christopher Caso claims that production on the phone has not begun yet. If the iPhone X is supposed to ship in late October or even early November, production should have already begun.

Caso’s survey of key “supply chain players” seems to suggest that things haven’t ramped up at all. No reason has been given yet as to why that is the case, whether it’s from difficulties in acquiring components or the low yield of the components themselves.

The Tame Apple Press is doing its best to discredit Caso’s comments, saying wacky things like “suppliers are not supposed to talk to analysts so he can’t know”.

However, the comments tally with what we have been told about problems Apple is having with the yield for the screens.

Apple’s dull iPhone 8 - which is more or less an iPhone 7 which was more or less an iPhone 6 - will go out as expected and Apple fanboys will have to make do with that.

The iPhone X is already about 18 months behind Samsung and other premium Android phones so when it does finally come out it will be more dated than a 1970s sitcom.