FT warns of Apple's first drop in revenue in 3 years due to China

APPLE lacks up to 15 million iPhones due to the epidemiological situation in CHINA, where nine out of ten devices are manufactured. The analysts pointed out

The net profit of the American corporation Apple in the fourth quarter of this year will decrease by more than 8%, for the first time in 14 quarters, the company's income will not grow, writes the Financial Times, citing the analytical company Visible Alpha. According to them, Apple's revenue for this period will fall below the record 123.9 billion received in the same quarter last year.

90% of iPhone devices are assembled in China, this country accounts for a fifth of the corporation's revenue. Due to CORONAVIRUS restrictions and a sharp surge in cases after their cancellation, the company faced a shortage of 5 million to 15 million iPhones.

In addition, there are difficulties with the sale of already manufactured devices: according to the FT, one Apple store in Beijing's main shopping district had to reduce its working hours because all its employees fell ill. There is also a shortage of workers on the production lines.

CNBC learns of Apple's talks to move iPad production to India

“We will see how absenteeism affects many operations not only in factories, but also in warehouse, distribution, logistics and transport facilities,” Bindiya Vakil, HEAD of Resilinc, told the newspaper. This company tracks the supply chains of components for device assembly.

China has been trying to eradicate the coronavirus, not control it, putting the country's manufacturing capacity at risk, said Alan Day, head of State of Flux, a British supply chain consultancy that is working with the UN on corporate standards for responding to the spread of covid. He stressed that the next two to six months will be key to the stability of Apple's supplies against the backdrop of the epidemiological situation in China.

“The rest of the world has developed standards, but China has been practically unable to force companies to adopt these standards,” Day explained.

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China has long operated under a “zero tolerance” policy for the coronavirus, which includes tight restrictions even with a small spread of infection in certain areas. After the protests, the Chinese government lifted many of the restrictions, after which the infection rates skyrocketed. The demonstrations took place after a fire in the city of Urumqi, during which ten people were killed. According to the South China Morning Post, the building was in a "high-risk" area due to the coronavirus, so leaving could be difficult. City officials denied this.

At a closed meeting of the National HEALTH Commission of China , it was reported that almost 250 million people in the country (about 18% of the total population of China) were infected with the coronavirus in December, wrote BLOOMBERG. According to the agency, in just one day on December 20, 37 million people in China fell ill.

From December 25, the publication of official statistics on covid-19 cases from the National Health Commission of China (NHC) will stop, it will continue to be published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the department said, without specifying how often the information will be updated.