William Gallagher
Multiple Apple iPhone suppliers in China have halted production for days to comply with new regulations regarding electricity consumption.
Not all Apple suppliers in China have yet been affected, and some of those which have, have instead limited their operations for other companies instead. However, manufacturers of iPhone components ranging from motherboards to speakers have been forced to halt work for several days.
According to Reuters, the issue is caused by new regulations aimed at toughening emissions standards, plus China's tightened coal supplies affecting industry.
Unimicron Technology Group, which makes motherboards for the iPhone, closed three of it subsidiaries from noon on September 26 to midnight on September 30. A spokesperson said it was to, "comply with the local government's electricity limiting policy."
The spokesperson says the company's other plants will make up the production loss. Similarly, speaker manufacturer Concraft Holding plans to use its inventory to meet demand while it suspends production for five days.
Unnamed sources have told Reuters that Foxconn, Apple's largest supplier, has seen only a "very small" impact. It's seemingly been confined to non-Apple production, too, with the company adjusting staff shifts to move work to October.
Foxconn affiliate Eson Precision Industry Co, however, has suspended production from Sunday to Friday. Apple's processor supplier, TSMC, reports no impact at its China plants.
Separately, TSMC has recently informed its customers that the cost of processors will be increasing.
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
13 Comments
China today is kind of a disaster.
Between increasing arrogance, militarism, wolf warrior diplomacy, and territorial claims of the entire South China Sea, its increasing isolation from the world at large is leading to things like retaliatory stopping the import of Australian coal which is crippling its economy.
China was given significant economic advantages by liberal western democracies hoping that bring them into world organizations would liberalize the country and bring western values to China, but instead China has taken and used its assets and position to subjugate lesser economies through things like the Belt and Roads Initiative to export uneconomical large capital projects to poorer nations placing them in enormous debt, and bought their votes in international organizations enabling them leverage undue influence in things like the World Health Organization and United Nations committees on Human Rights despite a total suppression of freedom of the press and massive human rights violations against dissidents and minorities.
Heck, they were only narrowly averted from taking over the committee on Intellectual Property despite their IP raids on foreign companies and failure to license IP they use every day, and counterfeit companies and products.
Their one child policy crippled its population growth in a country where there are few social support structure, and the increasingly aging population is supported by only a single offspring. The economy is rife with corruption caused by laws which require party members on any large corporation's board, with little or no accountability which means those party members loot the company's coffers - and there's no meaningful auditing of finances which leads to disasters like Lukin Coffee and Evergrande.
Xi Jinping has suppressed all dissent and through multiple purges has diminished any chance that he could be toppled, and as more and more things go wrong with the Chinese economy he's prematurely taken Hong Kong and been building his military forces and greedily eyeing prosperous Taiwan.