The shipment of Apple’s new iPhone could be delayed after a factory fire in China forced the world’s second-biggest memory chip maker to suspend operations.
South Korean company SK Hynix revealed a blaze broke out earlier this week at its microchip factory in Wuxi, China, during the installation of equipment, forcing it to suspend production.
The company’s customers include Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Dell and Sony, and market research firm Trendforce warned that “the shipment of nearly 11 million notebooks and 10 million smartphones will be affected within the span of a month.”
It could be a blow to Apple , which is expected to launch its new iPhone 5S next week.Trendforce said the fire, which lasted for 90 minutes, is likely to “considerably” impact SK Hynix’s production and could lead to a global shortage.
The factory produces 40%-50% of the firm’s total memory-chip output. News of the fire sent the price of memory chips surging as much as 19%, the biggest increase since September 2010, according to DRAMeXchange, Asia’s largest market for the components.
But SK Hynix spokeswoman Park Seong-ae said: “We expect to resume operations in a short time period so that overall production and supply volume would not be materially affected. In addition, we expect that the majority of damage will be covered through insurance.”
SK Hynix had a 30% share of the world’s memory-chip market in the last quarter, behind Samsung.
