2021 was a year in which many companies experienced severe chip and component shortages because of the pandemic. Apple was also among the affected tech giants, and the company had considerable delays in shipping for many of its products, including the most recent iPhones or iPads. Now, MacRumors reports that the situation seems to be easing.
2022 starts with an easing chip shortage situation, at least for Apple supplier Foxconn
The first quarter of 2022 is reportedly experiencing a major improvement in regards to component shortages, and luckily, it seems that overall supply constraints will be easing in the second half of the year. At least this is the information a spokesperson for Foxconn (one of Apple’s main iPhone components suppliers). TSMC is the company responsible for manufacturing Apple’s custom-designed chips, but Cupertino is still relying on many industry-standard chips such as for power management, from other companies.
Display drivers and power management chips were the components that were mostly affecting Apple’s manufacturing capabilities and causing delays in shipping for many of Apple’s products in 2021. Unfortunately, though, Foxconn stated that despite the situation improving, power management chips are still in short supply.
Although this announcement is indeed an encouraging sign across the tech industry, TSMC on the other hand has warned that chip supplies won’t be improving as much throughout 2022. In the future, Foxconn and TSMC are planning to have larger inventories of components in order to avoid situations like this occurring going forward.
Despite the situation improving, Foxconn says power management chips are still in short supply
The thing is, in reality, the chip shortages and supply chain disruptions seem to have primarily affected low-end vendors with little considerable impact on tech giants such as Apple. Despite that, Cupertino was also inevitably affected by this.
Apple had previously prioritized iPhone 13 shipments over iPad orders
According to Nikkei Asia, Apple is currently struggling with a backlog of iPad orders, because it had prioritized iPhone 13 shipments previously.Back in November, we reported on the fact that Apple seems to have cut iPad production in half (from the original plans the company had) in order to have more parts for the iPhone 13 series, which were just announced at the time. iPads and iPhones share some common components, such as core and peripheral chips.
The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are also still in short supply globally. It seems that more than three months after the release of the newest MacBook models, Apple is still struggling with shipment delays on them. So far, orders on the 14-inch MacBook Pro can go up to three or four weeks in the US, and for the 16-inch model, it is around five to six weeks of a shipping delay.
Apple still sets records in revenue despite chip shortages
It seems this entire pretty unfortunate situation with the supply chain disruptions cost Apple $6 billion for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2021, but the company seems to be recovering now and preparing for the new product launches for this year.
Apple’s all-time high revenue reports
Despite the supply chain issues, Apple was able to set records in sales for the fourth quarter of 2021 (basically, its first fiscal quarter of 2022). The tech giant was able to set record-breaking revenue for the period. It reported revenue of $123.9 billion and a net quarterly profit of $34.6 billion. For reference, in the same quarter last year, Apple had reported $1114. billion in revenue and a net quarterly profit of $28.8 billion.
Pretty much, these numbers for the quarter are all-time records for the company, across iPhone, Mac, Wearables, and Services segments. So, despite the delays in shipments and the shortages in components, Apple is still able to grow its customer base.
