Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partners are said to be foregoing a traditional work stoppage during the important Chinese New Year in a bid to meet ongoing high demand for the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. There aren’t too many details but Taiwan’s United Daily News claims that Hon Hai Precision Industries and Flexium Interconnect will keep certain production lines open during the Chinese New Year to keep up with demand for Apple’s newest iDevices. China’s most important holiday will start on February 10.
According to the publication, Hon Hai which is better known as Foxconn, will be operating a number of iPhone and iPad mini assembly lines while Flexium will keep its factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province staffed with “a large number” of trained student workers. If it turns out to be true, the work continuation will mirror an identical decision made in 2011 by Apple partner Pegatron, which offered employees triple pay to work over the Chinese New Year. No such bump in pay has been reported for 2013 as of yet.
The move to keep facilities running during the holiday indicates that the supply is just barely meeting demand as evidenced by the U.S. Apple Online Store’s on week wait time for all iPad mini models. The iPhone 5, which is continuing to be Apple’s most ambitious rollout ever recently had the handset debut in its 101st market, the Caribbean island of St. Kitts on Thursday. As pointed out by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, the latest launch received little fanfare from press outlets. It’s still quite impressive to see Apple rolling out the popular handset so quickly.
Source: Fortune, United Daily News via Brightwire
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