iPhone SE, iPad Air shipments potentially hit by Foxconn factory closure

Apple’s online store currently places the delivery for the iPad Air at 2–3 weeks

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iPhone 13

14 March 2022

Shipments of the latest iPhone SE and iPad Air could be delayed following the closure of a Foxconn factory due to a surge of Covid cases in mainland China.

Authorities placed the tech hub city of Shenzhen, home to 13 million people, on lockdown on Sunday that is expected to last until at least 20 March.

Non-essential businesses have been ordered to shut down or work from home, meaning that the Apple supplier’s largest factory is suspending operations until further notice.

Located in the Longhua Town district of Shenzhen, the manufacturing plant, also known as ‘Foxconn City’, employs as many as 450,000 workers and is known to assemble Apple smartphones and tablets.

This includes the latest 5G-enabled iPhone SE and iPad Air, which were announced last Tuesday during Apple’s Peek Performance event. Pre-orders for both products opened on Friday, 11 March, with deliveries commencing on 18 March. However, these timeframes could now be delayed by the lockdown restrictions.

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is reported to be moving production to backup manufacturing plants. This includes its Zhengzhou factory in northern China, which accounts for 80% of iPhone assembly, with the capacity to produce 500,000 phones a day, according to the South China Morning Post.

Foxconn could also be granted the right to reopen under a ‘closed management’ system, where staff live and work in a bubble and isolate themselves from the wider public, according to Reuters. The company’s Shenzhen factory is known to provide dormitories and vast canteens for its employees, with around one in four workers estimated to be living within the factory’s walls in 2012, according to The Atlantic.

Technology analyst Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight told IT Pro that “no one is immune to supply chain disruption”, which “remains an ongoing challenge for all businesses”.

However, Pescatore noted that, “to date, Apple has done a good job in managing this issue while bringing new products to market”.

The “record revenue for its last quarter is a testament to this belief against a supply side crunch”, he added.

Other companies that could be affected by the Shenzhen factory closure include Foxconn customers Cisco, Dell, Huawei, and Microsoft.

The plant became subject of controversy due to the reports of 18 reported suicide attempts in 2010 alone caused by poor working conditions.

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