Apple Watch rationing caused by the MOON GOAT, not quality

Apple's Watch may not be a buggy, broken mess after all - and those adjectives can instead be applied to human resources practices at Taiwanese OEM Quanta.

That's the inference being drawn after Quanta vice chairman CC Leung uttered the words below to Digitimes:

Because of labor shortages during the Lunar New Year holidays, Quanta was forced to borrow manpower from other manufacturers and was only able to deliver limited shipments in the first quarter. However, Quanta already has sufficient capacity to manufacture all the orders and should see a giant contribution from its wearable device business in the second quarter.

Leung's not saying just which products were delivered in limited shipments, but his company is known to be Apple's supplier and Apple is releasing the Watch rather more slowly than is usually the case.

Lunar New Year celebrations in the Sinosphere are enormous, as most people travel for family celebrations. Transport services are booked well in advance of the holiday and many people travel home several days before and after New Year celebrations. So it's entirely credible to suggest that worker movements robbed Quanta of staff in February - as the current Year of the Goat was ushered in - and made it hard to build huge volumes before the device's April 24th launch. Keeping staff at work over the period is akin to asking people to work over Christmas and New Year, so Quanta can't be faulted if it couldn't get the bodies needed for a job.

And Apple? If the company was asking its manufacturing partners to be at peak output over the Lunar New Year, it was pretty much asking for trouble. ®