Taiwan-based IT companies have continued to diversify their production bases to counter the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and US-China trade disputes, but has slowed their paces recently amid the resurging pandemic in Southeast Asia, India and Taiwan, according to industry sources.

India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan have all recently experienced rising COVID-19 infections, with the New Kinpo Group already announcing to suspend several of its production lines in Thailand until June 3.

Quanta Storage, which has plants in Thailand for manufacturing hard disc drive (HDD), is also closely monitoring the local pandemic, despite the fact that its plants are not in the hot zones.

The sources pointed out that the resurging pandemic may have shorter-term impacts, but the US-China trade tensions are unlikely to ease anytime soon.

Most network communication product makers currently only have around 40-50% of their production in China, down sharply from over 90% prior to the trade tensions. Most of their non-China capacities are in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

The makers also plan to use their capacities in China to support orders if their non-China facilities are suspended due to pandemic lockdowns, the sources said.

Server makers have also seen the operation of their production lines in Mexico remain stable, thanks to increasing vaccination there. Although Taiwan is now seeing increasing COVID-19 infections, its server production is expected to remain operational.