Good Morning Silicon Valley

Within the first few weeks after Apple’s iPhone went on sale, scattered reports began coming in from users who said a portion of the touch-sensitive screen had become permanently unresponsive, disabling access to some keys or messing up the key mapping. While Apple hasn’t talked about the issue publicly, the iPhone support team is reportedly familiar with the failures and has been processing replacement units promptly.

But today an analyst raised the possibility that the failure rate could mount. Nomura International’s Richard Windsor told clients that the screen technology was purchased from a bankrupt Finnish company that later found that the touch-sensitive film in its design had a tendency to degrade after three to six months. A scary prospect for anyone who owns one of the pricey lust objects (and apparently another excuse for investors to let some air out of Apple stock), but still just a small cloud on the horizon. Windsor concludes that all this “is only a small indication and no definite indication of a problem at this stage.”