Apple components: There is a global shortage for electronic components that the tech industry is facing currently. Now, Foxconn, which handles the manufacturing of several major tech companies including Apple, has said that it has also started to experience the impact of this shortage. Foxconn CEO Young Liu said that the shortages would render the Taiwanese company unable to fulfil some of the orders it has received. Liu also believes that these shortages would continue to prevail at least till next year’s second quarter.
The development was apparently shared by Liu with investors during the latest earnings call of the company, during which he said that the supply during this quarter’s first two months had been fine because its customers are all very big, but the company has begun to witness the changes during this past month.
For now, Liu does not expect the impact of the shortage to be large for now, saying that Foxconn would only miss about 10% of the orders because of the issue, mainly because of the larger order volumes. However, it is still a big miss for Foxconn, and so consequently, Apple and other customers.
Last year in spring as well, Foxconn had to bear with slowdowns in production because the coronavirus pandemic was heightening, and there were government shutdowns, causing factory workers to be quarantined and stay at home due to lockdowns. This had led to delay across the supply chain, which caused Apple to launch its iPhone 12 series at a later than usual time in November last year. As compared to that, the current slowdown is less drastic, but the shortage could lead to mounting of delays later in the year.
Foxconn is the latest in the series of tech companies calling out the shortage of components and chips, with Samsung having warned its investors about the issue earlier this month. Prior to them, Sony and Microsoft had both cited this shortage as the reason for the very low supply of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
