Aaron Lee, Taipei; Joseph Tsai

 

As Taiwan-based chassis supplier Catcher Technology's plants in Suzhou, China have been ordered to suspend production by the local government, sources from upstream supply chain players believe the incident could affect shipments of Apple's MacBook and some notebook brand vendors' ultrabooks.

Due to close to 80% of Catcher's capacity already being booked by Apple for its MacBook series products, the production suspension of Catcher will directly impact Apple's MacBook shipments and relatively affect the supply proportion of other brand vendors, which account for the other 20%, the sources noted.

Since these downstream clients are unlikely to find a new partner to shift their orders to, they can only wait for the company to resume its operation.

The suspension is expected to affect Catcher's October revenues by 20% and if the company is not able to pass the evaluation by the end of October, the impact to revenues may expand to 40% in November.