You know what could lengthen the already long wait times for Mac Studio even more? COVID-19. I don’t want to be a “Danny Downer,” so I’ll let Apple Insider do it. That site has news of new COVID lockdowns in Shenzhen, China that it says could “potentially” impact manufacturers and shipments.
According to the piece, the government in China has put Shenzhen in lockdown due to a surge in COVID infections in Hong Kong. “Under the order,” the piece says:
…everyone in [Shenzhen], which has a population of 17.5 million people, will face three rounds of testing, as part of a “zero tolerance” strategy against the virus.
With the exception of companies supplying food, fuel, and essential goods or services, all businesses were ordered to close or implement work-from-home policies. It is expected that the lockdown will persist until March 20 at the earliest.
Shenzhen Lockdown Stops iPhone Production There
Knowing that that had happened, a story a few hours later from 9 to 5 Mac really can’t be a surprise, and yet I had the temerity, the audacity, the unmitigated gaul to go ahead and be surprised anyway. Since iPhones are not food nor fuel nor essential goods ’n’ services, their Shenzhen production has been stopped. “As reported by Bloomberg,” says 9 to 5 Mac:
…the lockdown has led Foxconn to suspend operations at two of its campuses in Shenzhen. To reduce the impact of the lockdown, the company has relocated production to other sites that are still operating regularly.
No telling what that means for anything Apple makes, since Apple keeps what it makes where super-secret. Be ready though to throw near term delivery expectations out the window.
[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said that the Shenzhen lockdown equated to the shuttering of “iPhone City,” a nickname for Foxconn’s largest iPhone production plant in China. My bad. “iPhone City” is in Zhengzhou, not Shenzhen.]
