Foxconn woes could pull down Apple iPhone shipments by 30% in November

Covid-19 pandemic trouble at Foxconn’s iPhone facility in China’s Zhengzhou city could hit Apple shipments

Technology giant Apple is likely to find itself at a loss with shipments of the company’s iPhones to dive by around 30 percent in the month of November. The reason attributed to this situation is that the Cupertino-based company’s supplier Foxconn is still not back to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a bad blow it its operations.

The pandemic woes at Foxconn’s large iPhone manufacturing facility in China’s Zhengzhou city still pin down operations. Foxconn is reportedly in efforts to enhance iPhone production at its factory in Shenzhen, in China. Though there have been reports that the situation at Foxconn is slowly inching back to normal, it doesn’t seem to be so. Foxconn even had plans to coordinate back-up production capacity with its other plants to reduce any potential impact.

Foxconn Zhengzhou plant accounts for a majority of iPhone output

As the world is aware, the Foxconn-owned factory in Zhengzhou is responsible for the majority of Apple’s global iPhone production. Apple has other manufacturing facilities in southern China and India too. The Foxconn plant in China’s Zhengzhou city has a manpower of more than 200,000 employees.

However, these workers had been an unhappy lot and were angry after China had brought in more stringent measures to curb Covid -19 spread within the site. The situation had even forced many migrant workers fled the plant for their hometowns. This had also led cities to chart out measures to accommodate them.

Significantly enough, electronic gadget makers are gearing up for the year-end holiday sales, but Apple might be facing hassles to live up to expectations on that front. The manner in which iPhone production has been impacted could make it a bad holiday season for the company. Vendors normally get a bulk of their sales targets achieved during the Christmas holiday season.

Covid-19 has continued to be a major problem in China, with authorities resorting to lockdowns and other stringent measures as precaution towards halting infections. China’s has extremely strict Covid policies, and authorities have directed localities to act swiftly to halt any outbreak.

Covid-19 policies make Foxconn workers flee plant

Compete lockdowns have become the norm most of the time. It needs to be noted that this month, Foxconn had halted dining-in at canteens and had asked workers to have their food in their dormitories. The supplier company had, however, been maintaining that the production if iPhones had been going on as usual. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Chinese social media posts had exposed the situation well, with images of Foxconn employees walking away from the plant to their loved ones. With employee numbers down, it could only be true that the output at the factory could have plummeted. That leaves Apple with fingers crossed on how it would manage the earlier projected shipments, and also have the devices stocked in time for the holiday sale season.