Buyers of Apple’s new iPhone 13 are facing longer-than-expected delivery times due to the disruption caused by the response to COVID-19 in Vietnam. A significant number of its component parts for camera modules for the four iPhone 13 models are assembled in Vietnam, Nikkei Asia reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Lauly Li, Cheng Ting-Fang, and Lien Hoang for Nikkei Asia:
The company has expanded the use of its new sensor-shift optical image stabilization (OIS) to all four iPhone models when previously it was only in the premium iPhone 12 Pro Max. This has put suppliers in the position of having to ramp up production without jeopardizing production quality, against the backdrop of severe restrictions due to COVID.
Sensor-shift OIS stabilizes sensors on the camera to make images smoother and video steadier even if users are in motion, and it is an improvement on previous technology that stabilized camera lenses.
“Assemblers can still produce the new iPhones, but there’s a supply gap [in] that the inventories of the camera modules are running low,” one of the executives with direct knowledge told Nikkei Asia. “There’s nothing we can do but to monitor the situation in Vietnam every day and wait for them to ramp up the output.”
The situation may improve as soon as around mid-October as production at one of the key iPhone camera module manufacturing facilities in southern Vietnam has gradually resumed in recent days after several months of on-and-off disruption, another executive familiar with the situation told Nikkei.
MacDailyNews Take: Patience, Padawans. Good things come to those who wait.
Total fake news to hit stock. Demand is very high. That why.