According to Nikkei, workers in Chinese factories that assemble iPhones and iPads were not called for overtime in early October for the first time. The cause was problems with supply chains, due to which the conveyors had to be suspended. This happened for the first time in the last decade.

Traditionally, October 1 in China is celebrated as the Day of the People's Republic of China, followed by a long weekend. “Due to the limited number of components and chips, it was pointless to work on weekends and pay overtime with front-line workers. This has never happened before, "said one supply chain manager.

Nikkei cites five factors that affected the supply of each of the iPhone 13 components: power limits in China, lockdown in Malaysia, restrictions in Vietnam , limited supply and other supply chain disruptions. The publication also stated that the orders of the components could be adjusted due to the mismatch of parts to each other. “Even if you have 99% of the components on hand, but you don’t have one or two or three parts, you cannot start the final assembly of the product,” explained the head of one of the main suppliers of Apple.

iPhone production in September and October 13 was down 20% from previous plans, supply chain participants told the Nikkei. This happened even after Apple prioritized all the necessary components for the latest flagship smartphone at the expense of other products such as the iPad and older generations of smartphones such as the iPhone 12 and iPhone SE.

For the same During this period, the reallocation of shared components further shrinked the iPad assembly, resulting in a production cut of about 50% than planned, while the production forecast for older generations of iPhones also fell by about 25%.

Apple has been forced to cut its overall production target for 2021, sources told Nikkei. In early December, the company planned to ship between 83 million and 85 million iPhone 13 units by the end of the year. Apple is still roughly 15 million units behind its target of 230 million iPhones this year.

To make matters worse, the new iPhone 13 Pro Max includes more than 2,000 components. The bottlenecks are not due to the production of the most expensive components like the core processor, the A15, or the 5G modem.

Consumers around the world are likely to skip the Christmas window if they place an order for a new iPad now. and delivery times have already been extended to mid-late January. For the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max, wait times have been reduced to one to two weeks from five weeks a month ago.

Other electronics and electronic component manufacturers have previously reported problems with order fulfillment ahead of the holidays. So, the CEO of Acer Jason Chen called the situation in the industry unprecedented. “Decades of experience in the industry is not enough. Nobody has come across this before. None of us knows how to deal with such difficulties correctly, "he noted.

In November, Russian retailers faced a shortage of smartphones, primarily iPhones. They complained that the shortage of new iPhones had reached 70-80%. The networks also noted the shortage of Samsung Galaxy Fold and S-series smartphones. In the same month, Apple lost its market share in unit sales of smartphones in Russia - now it is 11% instead of 14.5%.

bbabo.Net