Apple’s sales rose in the December quarter as Foxconn’s fell — before Apple shut its stores and Foxconn its factories
From “Apple Supplier Foxconn’s Profit Drops in the Fourth Quarter” ($) in Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
Foxconn Technology Group’s net profit fell 23.7% in the fourth quarter before the coronavirus pandemic struck the world’s biggest contract electronics assembler and its largest customer, Apple Inc…
Apple’s revenue rose 9% in the December quarter to $91.8 billion, driven by blossoming sales of devices and services connected to the iPhone. Sales of iPhones, which account for more than half of its revenue, rose 8% to nearly $56 billion…
Apple has been hurt on a number of fronts by the coronavirus pandemic. In China, where the health crisis began, Foxconn and other suppliers closed factories, which eroded iPhone supplies. Apple also had to shut down its stores there. As the epidemic reached Europe and the U.S., Apple shuttered stores and halted nearly all activity at its Silicon Valley campus..
My take: Note that the last paragraph describes events that occurred after the close of the December quarter. Foxconn didn’t offer an explanation for its December shortfall, but that didn’t stop the Journal from drawing its own conclusions.
In June of last year, Apple started to diversify outside of China. Apple uses other contract manufacturers, not just Foxconn. The last quarter of 2019 says nothing about the future of Apple. Foxconn revenue was down only 3.8% even though profitably was down 23.7%.
It shouldn’t be any wonder why I don’t subscribe to anything “newsy”. Nothing changes in the stories except the dates. Given the quality of their work product I’m surprised journalists get that right.
Nope. The factories were already largely shut down, and in an orderly fashion, for Chinese New Year. This happens every year. All that happened is they stayed down longer
The question is, why can’t this article get it’s “facts” straight? And why ding Apple for being a good citizen of the world and helping folks, including employees, shelter from the disease? Apple can easily afford to forego a little profit to help out its employees and its customers. Is that mentioned in the story?