Roger Fingas
Several Taiwanese companies in Apple's supply chain — including processor maker TSMC, and assembly firm Pegatron — are insisting that a major blackout which hit the island on Tuesday did little to disrupt production, a serious concern given the imminent arrival of new iPhones.
In fact both TSMC and Pegatron claim that their operations were unaffected, according to Reuters and Nikkei. Other unscathed parties include frame/casing maker Catcher Technology, and lens maker Largan Precision.
Three other suppliers — Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), PowerTech, and ChipMOS — did admit to problems at production facilities, but said there was little overall impact.
ASE does assembly and testing of the iPhone's baseband, Wi-Fi, and Touch ID chips. ChipMOS does memory production for Micron, while PowerTech assembles and tests memory for Micron, Toshiba, and SanDisk — all three of which count Apple as a client.
The blackout has already had serious political repercussions, leading to the resignation of Minister of Economic Affairs Chih-Kung Lee, and an apology from President Tsai Ing-wen. The chairmen of Taiwan Power Co. and CPC Corp. could potentially be forced to step down.
On top of impacting Taiwanese industry, the blackout posed a serious health threat given temperatures close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Apple is expected to announce three new iPhones next month: an OLED-based "iPhone 8," and more conventional "iPhone 7s" and "7s Plus" models. While mass production of the "8" may or may not be underway, the "7s" series is almost certainly in full swing and could be more severely crippled by production issues.
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3 Comments
Investors aren’t buying the FUD ,apparently, as AAPL remains at an all time high. The short sellers are working diligently to trash the stock but it isn’t working.
Come on, surely these facilities have back-up generators for their critical systems.
Imagine just a single power equipment can shut down the whole country. And this is what just happened.