The continuing COVID-19 crisis, and the recent outbreaks in Vietnam have disrupted plans by Apple, Amazon, Google and their suppliers to shift production away from China.
Border closures in Vietnam, China, and various parts of Asia, have forced Apple to start the mass production of its latest AirPods in China, rather than in Vietnam, as planned. This comes as a blow to the Vietnamese economy, as the AirPods were the first of Apple’s products to shift some of the production to Vietnam, back in 2019.
Plans to move some of Apple’s iPad and MacBook production to Vietnam have also been put on ice.
COVID-19 outbreaks in Asia mean that Google will also be producing its Pixel 6 in China, instead of Vietnam. The Pixel 5 was also intended to be produced in Vietnam last year, but COVID outbreaks also put paid to that.
Both companies had planned to aggressively shift production out of China from 2019, but the ongoing pandemic has disrupted this.
Apple still plans to make 20 per cent of its AirPods in Vietnam, however any type of timeline for this massive shift seems rather futile at the moment.
