Planning to purchase Apple’s shiny new iPhone 14 as Black Friday kicks off the vacation buying season? Good luck. The gadget is in extraordinarily brief provide each on-line and on the firm’s stores, based on Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
“We believe demand for iPhone 14 units into the all-important Black Friday holiday weekend is way ahead of supply and could cause major shortages leading into Christmas season,” he mentioned in a report on Friday.
Blame COVID. A renewed outbreak of the illness in China has slowed manufacturing at FoxConn, the electronics producer that assembles iPhones for Apple. China’s “zero-COVID” coverage is not serving to, both. Authorities reported document excessive COVID-19 case numbers in mainland China for the second consecutive day Friday. The surging caseload has prompted new and spreading residential lockdowns, in addition to business shutdowns in a number of main cities.
“The zero-COVID China shutdowns in Foxconn have been a major gut punch to Apple this quarter and we believe have taken roughly 5% of iPhone 14 units out of the supply chain and thus putting Cupertino in a ‘major shortage’ heading into the next month,” Ives mentioned.
He expects Apple to promote roughly 8 million iPhones over the Black Friday weekend, down from 10 million a 12 months in the past.
Labor strife at FoxConn this week is creating one other headache for Apple. A dispute over pay and dealing circumstances on the firm’s manufacturing unit in Zhengzou in central China sparked worker protests. The Taiwanese firm was pressured to apologize on Thursday after police roughed up staff, blaming the pay dispute on a “technical error” in including new workers.
“If Zhengzhou remains at lower capacity the next few weeks and continues to see the unrest build with workers, this would cause clear major iPhone Pro shortages into the all-important Christmas time period, especially in the U.S.,” Ives mentioned.
The Associated Press contributed to this report