William Gallagher
Apple's new iPhone 13 range is reportedly seeing longer than usual delivery times worldwide because a coronavirus spike is disrupting component assemblers in Vietnam.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max, went on backorder within an hour of preorders starting, and now most of the range is delayed into middle or late October. A new report, however, says that the shipping is being affected by production delays, as much as demand.
According to Nikkei Asia, a significant number of camera components are assembled in Vietnam. The country is currently the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak.
"Assemblers can still produce the new iPhones, but there's a supply gap [in] that the inventories of the camera modules are running low," an unnamed supply chain executive 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."
Contributing to the issue is that more iPhone 13 models now contain the sensor-shift optical image stabilization that was previously confined to the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It's meant that production quantity of the component has had to be ramped up.
Nikkei Asia says that the delays may start to shorten in mid-October as production has been gradually resuming in one key facility in southern Vietnam.
Currently, US buyers who order the iPhone 13 Pro or iPhone 13 Pro, will see an earliest expected delivery date of October 28. Buyers ordering the iPhone 13 should get it from October 18, and iPhone 13 mini is typically shipping from October 12.
Separately, workers in Vietnam have been reported to be sleeping on factory floors, specifically to guard against coronavirus outbreaks.
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
Marko Zivkovic
9 Comments
……. What the f$@k
Honestly, can we even call them "outbreaks" anymore? This thing is global and has been for 18 months. Mitigation of spread measures have obviously and spectacularly failed (quarantine, masking, social distancing, shutdowns and lockdowns). Unless there are so many workers out sick that it impacts production, there should be minimal impact. Because science.
They've been one of the stars throughout the pandemic with near-nonexistent cases but with delta and low vaccination rates cases have had a chance to explode. They were doing such a fantastic job and need to show us how to get this back under control. It looks like their 9 weeks in quarantine ends this week.
I thought Vietnam had a really good record for keeping C19 out. Horrible if that’s being compromised.