How the Coronavirus threat is affecting tech companies

TrendForce expects coronavirus to hurt supply of notebooks, monitors and more.

TrendForce said that it expects the Coronavirus outbreak to cause lower-than-expected shipments of notebooks, monitors and other products in the first quarter of 2020 as manufacturers struggle to resume normal operations.

The research firm predicted that numerous product categories, from smartphones and smart watches to notebooks and monitors, will ship fewer units than originally anticipated. The actual change in its forecast varied from category to category.

Smart watches are expected to have it worst, for example, with a revised forecast of 12.1 million units shipped instead of 14.4 million. TVs are expected to have it better: TrendForce predicted a 4.5% drop from 48.8 million to 46.6 million units.

Other categories landed somewhere between those extremes. Of particular note are the declines for notebooks (12.3%), game consoles (10.1%) and monitors (5.2%). All three were expected to be hit by manufacturing delays or component shortages.

Here’s what TrendForce had to say about notebooks:

“The downstream ODMs and brands in the supply chain are undoubtedly hit the most by the coronavirus outbreak. These companies lost precious working days after work resumption was postponed. After their production is resumed, on a whole, operators’ work resumption rate is low. Besides, all types of materials and components are in shortage. Hence, productivity plummets.

“To assemble a notebook set requires complicated key components. At the current stage, notebook batteries, hinge, and PCB already experienced shortage or out of stock. This factor might cause some brands’ shipment quantity to remarkably drop from previous prediction (35 million units) to 30.7 million units in 1Q20.”

TrendForce wasn’t alone in predicting supply issues for notebook makers. DigiTimes said that laptop (and smartphone and semiconductor) manufacturers were struggling to resume normal operations because of the Coronavirus outbreak.

The only category TrendForce didn’t seem worried about was memory products. Companies stockpiled memory in anticipation of the Chinese New Year, which helps, as do the highly automated nature of these fabs and their shipping clearances.

Here’s the good news: TrendForce currently believes that most of these product categories will be able to quickly recover from their problems in the first quarter. Assuming, of course, that the Coronavirus outbreak is resolved sooner than later.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Nintendo might struggle to meet demand for its Switch console due to supply problems caused by the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak.

Switch consoles shouldn’t be hard to come by in the short-term, Bloomberg said, because Nintendo’s already shipped all the units it expects to sell through March. But current supply constraints might lead to a global shortage as early as April.

Nintendo wouldn’t be the only gaming company facing a product shortage as a result of Coronavirus. Facebook said earlier this month that its Oculus Quest headset was affected by the outbreak, for example, and the product still hasn’t been restocked.