TrendForce said that in the first quarter of 2020, global smartphone production expected to decline by 12 percent year on year to 275 million units due to the corona virus outbreak that killed more than a thousand people. Brands such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei are setting up production facilities in China due to cheap labor. But the fatal epidemic in the country has disrupted the operation of many factories. Naturally, this causes companies to lag behind their planned production targets. Corona virus outbreak strikes smartphone production Last month, Apple’s suppliers reported more than 100 cases of corona viruses in Henan and Guangdong provinces, where their main production center is located, and therefore announced that the production rate could decline. The company in Cupertino asked its suppliers to produce around 80 million iPhones in the first half of this year. Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, is expected to produce 71.5 million smartphones in the first quarter. According to TrendForce, the main production center of the South Korean technology giant in Vietnam will cause it to suffer less from the virus outbreak than other manufacturers. The report reminds that Samsung’s smartphones make up only 2 percent of the domestic market in China. Huawei, the number two smartphone brand in the market, according to TrendForce, will produce 42.5 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2020, down 15 percent. On the other hand, TrendForce, which does not offer a bad projection for the whole of 2020, predicts that the production volume may increase with the control of the corona virus epidemic.
