Rumor: HP and Dell consider moving part of laptop production out of China

Several electronics manufacturers including Dell, HP and Microsoft are said to be exploring the possibility of relocating some of their hardware production from China to other countries due to rising production costs and uncertainty surrounding the trade war.

HP and Dell would consider getting up to 30 percent of their laptop production from China and outsourcing it to another country. In addition, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo would consider such plans for their console production, and Google and Amazon for the smart speakers. Furthermore, Lenovo, Acer and Asus are considering a shift from China for their PC production. That claims the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei based on sources. The newspaper regularly publishes rumors that turn out to be true, but is also sometimes wrong.

Amazon and Nintendo would consider Vietnam as an alternative, while Microsoft is looking at Thailand and Indonesia. Nikkei was rumored last month that Apple wants to move 30 percent of its iPhone production from China to another country. There have been reports for years that electronics manufacturers are shifting production to countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and India, as labor costs in China rise. For example, Quanta, Foxconn and Inventec have moved the production of servers for data centers to Taiwan, Mexico and the Czech Republic. Quanta, Foxconn and Compal are the manufacturers that make laptops and other hardware on behalf of, for example, HP, Dell, Apple and Microsoft.

Higher Chinese labor costs are adding to the trade war between the US and China for many companies. This leads to further rising costs and uncertainty for the future. Last weekend, US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping appeared to have taken the worst of the cold out of the air, but the soothing words have not yet changed the electronics companies’ minds, Nikkei writes.