iPhone 14 Pro shipments will be “less than expected” after a factory lockdown in China related to anti-COVID restrictions, Apple has warned, bad news as the holiday season approaches.
• Also read: Largest iPhone factory in the world: The cramped environment after the employees fled
Apple said its main manufacturing base in Zhengzhou (center) is “currently operating at significantly reduced capacity” since discovering a cluster of positive COVID-19 cases.
“Customers have to wait longer to receive their new products,” said the American company in a press release on Sunday evening.
“As we have done since the pandemic began, we are prioritizing the health and safety of workers in our supply chain,” the apple brand adds.
Taiwanese company Foxconn, Apple’s main subcontractor, has been facing a spike in COVID-19 cases at its massive Zhengzhou site, the world’s largest iPhone factory, since October.
For its part, Foxconn announced that it had “revised downwards” its year-end financial forecasts.
“The group’s fourth-quarter outlook was originally ‘cautiously optimistic,’ but due to the pandemic affecting some of our Zhengzhou operations, the company will downgrade that outlook,” Foxconn said in a statement.
“Foxconn is now working together with the authorities against the pandemic to resume production at full capacity as soon as possible,” he added.
The company has not disclosed the extent of the impact of the containment on its financial results.
Sanitary Bubble
Foxconn has also announced new measures for its employees on the social network Wechat, in particular a “sanitary bubble” between the dormitories and the factory.
Staff who continue to work will be grouped into three dormitories, the group said.
Hundreds of workers, initially confined, fled the factory last week in a disaster angered at their living conditions.
“Usually almost all iPhones are produced in Zhengzhou,” Ivan Lam, an analyst at the special company Counterpoint, told the AFP news agency a few days ago.
The apple brand is heavily dependent on China, where it has more than 90% of its products manufactured. The country is also one of its most important markets.
Unlike its Silicon Valley neighbors, Apple has so far weathered the economic crisis well, even if the strong dollar is weighing on its earnings.
From July to September, the American group’s sales of the iPhone, its flagship product, increased by 9.7% to $42.6 billion in one year.
For the holidays, the company and experts expected strong demand for the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro Max.
Foxconn is the largest private employer in China, with more than a million people working in its 30 or so factories and research facilities across the country.
The industrial center of Zhengzhou is located about 600 km from Beijing and employs up to 300,000 people who live there all year round in “iPhone City”, a kind of city within a city.