“I think somebody is kind of trying to cough up a hairball here,” Akerson said in a telephone interview. “If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy. I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing” business.

Recognizing that this is merely a rumor, I have two thoughts here: First, Apple is aware of all of this. Second, it’s Apple—they were probably warned against making a phone too, but they did it. Apple is going to enter markets it believes it can dominate in some fashion—markets that need changing and where they can break the status quo.