Not a blog intended on creating blind panic or sensationalising this subject, merely collating some of the recent news updates from multiple sources including the technology vendors themselves about the impact that Coronavirus is having on their supply chain.
A lot of the worlds consumer and enterprise tech is either manufactured or relies upon components manufactured in China. A number of vendors have warned of supply chain issues and thus product availability shortages as a direct result of the Coronavirus:-
HPE – blame revenue shortfall on shortage of Intel chip shortages – here
Dell – Announce CPU shortages – here
Apple – Blame supply chain shortages for missing revenue targets – here – A number of their suppliers are in Wuhan.
Fujitsu – Delayed the opening of their factories until after the lunar holidays and some operations are not yet back up and running here
Microsoft – Announce product shortages here
As was reported on Fox Business “If Chinese manufacturing activities normalize in the next one to two weeks, the effect will be transitory; but if the situation drags into March and April, the effect could be more disruptive for the sector,” Fitch’s senior directors wrote.
The problem isn’t just isolated to the component manufacturers, Coronavirus has had a knock on effect with logistics with some reports stating that whilst manufacturing may be back up and running, in some circumstances the transport methods available to get goods from A to B are not at full capacity or in some circumstances, suspended altogether.
Outside of the hardware shortages, a number of the prominent names are taking precautions to limit the impact on other operations, Adobe, Cisco, F5, Facebook, Nvidia and Salesforce have all cancelled major events and several other expo’s have been postponed or cancelled such as the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which was scheduled last week.
ZDnet have published some interesting articles of late regarding the long term effects of the outbreak and how it might accelerate future working conditions and definition of BAU which is worth a read.
