For those who missed the news, on the 6th of February, an earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.4 struck Taiwan. The earthquake is said to have been the deadliest earthquake in the country since the 921 earthquake and has left 116 confirmed dead. Not only has it affected the lives of the Taiwanese people, but it has affected businesses as well.
According to a report from DigiTimes (via 9to5Mac), it seems that the Taiwan earthquake has affected chipset maker TSMC. For those unfamiliar, TSMC is one of the companies that Apple turns to for the production of their A-series chipsets. In fact recent rumors have suggested that TSMC could be the sole manufacturer of this year’s A10 chipset for the iPhone 7.
The report claims that TSMC is expected to have 95% of their production capacity restored in the next 2-3 days, and that the long-term impact would be a loss of 1% of their 2016 production. It has also been suggested that damage to one of their chip fabrication facilities was worse than originally assessed.
Given that Apple’s iPhone 7 is only expected later in the year, it is unclear if this damage to TSMC’s production facilities will affect the production of the iPhone as well, or if by then things should be back up and running smoothly, but we guess we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime our thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Taiwan affected by the disaster.