Here’s How Coronavirus Outbreak Is Going To Affect AirPods Production

The current Coronavirus outbreak in China is seen to have a major impact on Apple's plans to release more AirPods and AirPods Pro units this year, a report claims.

Apple has temporarily shut down its retail stores, offices and plants in China in order to mitigate the effects of nCoV to its business in the Asian country. Previous reports reveal that the current outbreak is seen to affect the production and eventual release of its new products, including the successor to the iPhone SE.

Now, a new report says the production of the AirPods is also affected. Here's how the current Coronavirus issue affects AirPods production.

Suppliers

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the Cupertino tech giant has ordered 45 million AirPods and AirPods Pro units for the first half of the year. Sources speaking to the news site, however, revealed that suppliers and assemblers are having problems due to the outbreak, and might not be able to manufacture enough units in time.

The AirPods Pro are currently out of stock in Apple's online and offline stores, as well as in retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy. The non-Pro AirPods, on the other hand, are still in stock, but the quantities are running low.

Three key AirPods manufacturers – Luxshare Precision Industry (also known as Luxshare-ICT), Inventec and Goertek have already stopped the majority of production since the Chinese Lunar New Year break started, the sources said. All three still have enough supplies for at least two weeks' worth of production, but need to receive fresh supplies from component makers across China.

All three manufacturers are scheduled to resume operations on Monday, but are only expected to reach maximum 50 percent production utilization rate due to the limited availability of supplies, the sources said. This number will not go up unless parts suppliers in China will be able to supply them with the necessary parts and components.

“We really have to wait and see how things play out next week. If the assemblers could not get enough supply of parts in two weeks, it will be a big problem,” a source said.

Labor

Aside from the need to receive fresh supplies, the companies are also still looking at the ramifications that resuming productions will bring. While the companies understand that continuing production will mean being able to ship more units as per Apple's orders, they also understand that even if just one worker is sick with nCoV, it will mean a return of the virus to the manufacturing facilities.

And once the virus is back, the companies might be forced to quarantine workers or shut their plants again, which means another delay in production.