Amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in China, Apple is moving production of some of its top devices, including some AirPods, iPad, and Apple Watch models to Taiwan.
Keoni Everington for Taiwan News:
Apple is trying to diversify its supply chain geographically due to the spread of the virus, which has seriously affected the production of Apple products in the communist country. Apple intends to gradually increase the proportion of production in Taiwan while still trying to maintain its cooperation with suppliers on the other side of the strait.
It is estimated that at least one-third of China’s production lines will lay idle in the first quarter of this year, and it would be almost impossible to return to the normal level of production before the end of February. It is also doubtful whether normal production could be resumed within the first ten days of March.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s only prudent that Apple moves some production from China to Taiwan in order to diversify production. It’s never good to be so reliant on one country.
According to the latest figures from Caixin, there have been 74,679 confirmed cases in China, with 16,168 recovered, 4,922 suspected cases, and 2,122 deaths due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
How do you just move production? Must take ages to do that.
“It’s never good to be so reliant on one country.”
Unless it’s your own country.
Not to split hairs: they have manufacturing in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China. What happens in China is the assembly. Moving that isn’t easy but they don’t really have a choice – many factories will be closed for safety reasons in China.
By the time they make this happen the crisis could very well be over. D’OH!
Reading a story early today about a company that moved production out of China to a neighboring country. Trouble was all the factory management were from China, and had gone home for the Lunar New Year celebration and cannot leave due to the quarantine. If they truly want to diversify they will have to hire different people in different regions.
Welcome Apple to Taiwan and other foreign industries as well, I believe that our prominent persons here could help. We do not have many domestic Covid-19 cases, most of the positive cases were imported; so it’s safe to invest in Taiwan with reasonable costs and trainable staffs. Besides, our government is more transparent than China’s.