Despite its legendary expertise in supply chain management and tendency for keeping even its most popular products in stock, Apple is beginning to feel the heat of the worsening global component shortage. This is according to Nikkei Asia’s latest exclusive, which reports that Apple has pushed back a portion of component orders for MacBooks and iPads due to the increasing difficulty of securing vital parts. While the shortages haven’t affected Apple’s production plans for its iPhones thus far, the development is quite worrisome based on where the company sits in the tech hierarchy and how easily it normally secures components—evidently, the chip shortage is getting very serious.
EXCLUSIVE | APPLE JUICED
— Nikkei Asia (@NikkeiAsia) April 8, 2021
Production of some MacBooks and iPads has been postponed due to the global component shortage in a sign that even Apple, with all its procurement power, is not immune from the supply crunch.@ChengTingFang & @Lauly_Th_Li report.https://t.co/HMkwCBkjDX
Large players like Apple, Samsung Electronics and HP have a lot of leverage with suppliers to demand that their orders receive priority when capacity is limited, said Peter Hanbury, a partner with consultancy Bain & Co. […] Now, however, “demand for some of these large product categories has outstripped the total capacity available,” Hanbury added. “They now face the same long-term challenges [as their chip suppliers and production partners] of adding manufacturing capacity, which takes years and billions of dollars.”
Source: Nikkei Asia