Supplier to Apple, Google, Amazon halts production due to China lockdowns
Foxconn, one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, has been forced to halt production at its second-largest site in Shenzhen, China due to lockdown measures amid rising COVID cases. The company is a supplier to the world’s largest tech giants, including Apple, Amazon and Google, according to Nikkei Asia.
Foxconn’s Shenzhen campus focuses on early engineering prototyping as well as research and development for Apple and other corporations.
The Shenzhen government announced a partial lockdown Sunday night, to last until March 20th. During that time, all non-essential businesses must remain closed and public transportation will be suspended. Only supermarkets, pharmacies and medical institutions may remain open, and residents have been warned not leave their homes.
The lockdown comes even after an eye-opening study from Johns Hopkins University found that not only have COVID-19 lockdowns not helped mortality rates, but they actually had very negative effects.
“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” says the study. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
China announced the lockdown after reporting more than 1,800 new COVID cases on Sunday, across the entire country.
China, which has a population of over 1.4 billion people, has seen 4,636 COVID-19-related deaths since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
It is so far unclear what impact the lockdowns and their ensuing supply chain disruptions will have on the world’s tech giants. However, electronics supply chains are already experiencing a significant chip shortage, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Two Ukrainian firms were responsible for producing a specific grade of neon that is used to manufacture semi-conductor chips. But those firms, which supplied about half of the neon used in the chip industry, had to suspend operations due to the invasion.
Now, it has been reported that Ford will be manufacturing cars without certain non-critical semiconductor chips due to the shortage. The company plans to install the missing chips in a year, post-sale.
