The production of Apple devices has been slow over the past few weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak. Many China-based Apple suppliers have shut down their factories which resulted in slow production. Earlier Apple announced that it would not reach its revenue goals as the first quarter ends in March. Seeing this, the Wall Street Journal has taken a look at Apple’s reliance on China and why it will still depend on china for its future productions.
Apple’s operations team has always shown a great concern about Apple’s dependency on China for its production. There were suggestions in early 2015 to relocate the assembly of products in India or Vietnam. At that time, it was a big challenge. Now, however, many think that it is possible also because of the coronavirus outbreak in china.
According to the WSJ, Apple is not able to relocate from China as it has thousands of employee who are both skilled and unskilled and have the expertise to manufacture apple device.
Dan Panzica, a former Foxconn executive, says that the population in China has allowed suppliers to build factories with a capacity for more than 250,000 people. Also, several workers in China for Apple exceeds the total population of Vietnam. India can be the closest comparison to China. However, it lags the infrastructure needed to assemble the Apple devices. Also, India does not have the expertise and skilled workers like China. Dan Panzica also added that Apple would not build mega factories anywhere else.
The WSJ also mentioned that Apple did assemble the iPhone 11 in India. Soon the manufacturing line was stopped because India did not have the skilled labour to meet the Apple manufacturing and assembling standards.