Apple assembler BYD to start iPad production in Vietnam this month

Apple assembler BYD plans to begin commercial production of iPads this month in Vietnam after a trial run started in May, Bloomberg News reports citing “a provincial government official.”
Apple’s ninth-generation iPad
Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen for Bloomberg News:

The production of the tablets is a boost for a country expected to benefit as electronics manufacturers seek alternatives to China.
“The factory has been running a trial phase since May and is scheduled to start commercial production this month,” said Nguyen Ngoc Hanh, head of the management board for industrial parks in Phu Tho province. “That is what they reported to us. They plan to hire 12,000 workers in total. They already have hired 4,000.”
Officials at the Phu Ha Industrial Park in December granted BYD a construction license to build a 6.23 trillion dong ($268 million) factory, according to a statement posted on the website of Phu Tho province. The plant will have the capacity to make 4.33 million tablets a year from as early as June 2022, according to the statement…
Apple suppliers with large production bases in China began considering shifting capacity to Southeast Asia after tensions between Washington and Beijing escalated, a shift that pandemic-era upheaval is expected to accelerate. This year, a series of lockdowns from Shanghai to Shenzhen have cast supply chains in disarray, exposing the fragility of a system that depends on China to make the majority of the world’s electronics.

MacDailyNews Take: Again, better (at least a decade) late than never!
Apple should have been diversifying production many years ago in order to minimize risk, not to mention China’s human rights abuses, authoritarian censorship, and myriad other concerns, including “COVID” lockdowns whose real reason for existence is to remind China’s subjugated citizenry who’s boss.
• There’s no such thing as zero-COVID, but this year is the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th party congress, so the farce will continue until the politics no longer dictate tilting at windmills. Then COVID will be allowed to wash through China, as it already has around much of the world. – MacDailyNews, May 9, 2022
• In general, human-transmissible coronaviruses do not disappear. There is no such thing as zero-COVID. Duh.
COVID-19 is here to stay. It will very likely become endemic, yet pose less danger over time. People will acquire immunity via vaccines (effectiveness TDB) and naturally as they contract and recover from variants like omicron since the partially-effective vaccines permit not only transmissibility, but also breakthrough infections. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds (OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1) are, of course, also endemic, but a combination of annual flu vaccines and acquired immunity means that sane societies tolerate the unavoidable seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks, social distancing, indefinite return-to-work delays, etc.
At which point, if ever, will some people decide that wasting away their short lives in abject fear of a bad flu, very likely engineered by China and partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is a hysterical self-defeating overreaction? – MacDailyNews, December 16, 2021
• The real virus is the panic. – MacDailyNews, March 9, 2020
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