Component shortages that have hampered the supply of iPhones for the last two years are beginning to ease, according to Foxconn, the largest iPhone manufacturer.
There has been a “significant improvement” in component shortages, and “overall supply limitations” are likely to lessen in the second half of the year, a Foxconn representative said earlier today. With the help of several industry-standard chips, such as those used for power management, TSMC produces Apple’s proprietary chip designs. Among the components that have limited Apple’s production capabilities are display drivers and power management processors; Foxconn also said that power management chips remain scarce.
TSMC has cautioned that chip supply would remain constrained until the year 2022, despite the positive news from the event. As a way to assure supply security, Foxconn and TSMC aim to keep greater stockpiles in the future.
Although bottlenecks in the smartphone supply chain have delayed shipments in the previous two years, this has mostly impacted low-end suppliers rather than industry heavyweights like Apple. Market experts expect bottlenecks to persist until the second half of 2022 at a bare minimum.
Recently, Nikkei Asia revealed that Apple is having difficulty fulfilling iPad backorders due of the company’s recent focus on iPhone 13 shipping schedules. In addition, there is still a global shortage of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
In the fourth fiscal quarter of 2021, supply chain limitations cost Apple $6 billion. However, as the company gears up for a slew of new product releases this year, the supply chain has now fully recovered.