Hacker News Reader

Comment by kalium-xyz | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else concerned about what apples use of titanium means for medical implants? Like does this not hamper production of things people need?

View on HN

Global production of titanium is about 210,000 metric tonnes. [1] An iPhone 15 Pro Max has about 18 grams of titanium in it. [2]

Rounding 18 up to 20 for the slightly larger 16 Pro Max, Apples sells 231 million iPhones per year. (210,000,000,000 grams)/(20 grams/iPhone * 231,000,000 iPhones) = 50.72

Apple is using at most 2% of the world's titanium. Obviously many of their phone sales are of smaller or titanium un-endowed models.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_production_by_country [2] https://www.benzinga.com/general/entertainment/23/10/3511608...

If someone is willing to sell me titanium chopsticks for a reasonable price (and they are), then no, I’m not concerned that Grandma doesn’t get a new hip because Apple Watch used up all the titanium.

Is there a titanium shortage?

Nah I just happend to know that the guy who used to produce titanium coated magnetic implants had to stop somewhere around 9 months before the release of the iphone 15 cause the capacity of the company he contracted with for the coating was used up and every other vendor he tried as well. Its not about the titanium itself but rather the ability to work with it for implants in concerned about. I figured it was related to apple as they have very high standards. I can find the source on the implant if anyone is interested iirc its called the titan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com