Covid19 disrupts world’s biggest iPhone factory production. Production at the world’s biggest iPhone factory, disrupted since October by China’s Covid-19 restrictions and worker protests, is now running at nearly full capacity, according to a Chinese state media report.
The sprawling campus in central China, owned by Apple (AAPL) supplier Foxconn, was running at 90% of planned production capacity at the end of December, the Henan Daily newspaper reported Tuesday. It cited an interview with Wang Xue, deputy general manager of the facility, which is also known as iPhone city. Covid19 disrupts world’s biggest iPhone factory production.
“At the moment, the order books look good, and the orders will peak from now until a few months after Chinese New Year,” he was quoted as saying. The Lunar New Year will begin on January 22.
Foxconn hasn’t yet responded to CNN’s request for comment about the report.
The company said last month it was working on restoring production, which had been badly affected by supply disruptions caused by Covid restrictions. Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives estimated in November that the disruptions in Zhengzhou had been costing Apple roughly $1 billion a week in lost iPhone sales.
According to a UBS report in November, the wait time for the latest 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max in the United States touched 34 days just before the Christmas holidays because of supply chain constraints in China. The UBS analyst called the wait time “extreme.”
The Henan Daily separately quoted an executive responsible for Foxconn’s logistics as saying that, in the first two days of January, the volume of inbound and outbound shipments had reached the highest level in a year.
The report of a nearly full resumption of production comes one month after China abruptly ended three years of pandemic controls, setting off a huge wave of Covid infections.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, a letter from Foxconn founder Terry Gou played a major role in persuading Chinese leaders to accelerate plans to dismantle the country’s Covid-19 policies. Gou was quoted as warning that strict Covid controls would threaten China’s central position in global supply chains.
