Apple Inc. will be breathing a sigh of relief with the news today that its main manufacturing partner Foxconn will resume normal production by the end of March — in time to manufacture a reported updated range of computers and iPads.

Foxconn also produces hardware for Amazon.com Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., Google LLC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Inc., Huawei Electronics Co. Ltd., Intel Corp., Nintendo Co. Ltd., Sony Corp., Xiaomi Inc. and others. It had shut most of its mainland Chinese manufacturing Feb. 4 due to coronavirus-related concerns.

Some manufacturing resumed Feb. 11, but Foxconn faced staff shortages due to workers being stranded due to quarantine and movement restrictions in mainland China. The company said today that more than half of its seasonal workforce had returned to work and that they expected to return to normal production by month’s end.

“Prevention of outbreak, resumption of work and production are our top priority,” Chairman Liu Young-way said during an online investor conference today, according to the South China Morning Post.

The resumption of full manufacturing will allow Apple to move ahead with new products with famed Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo providing details of the new products in an investor note.

Kuo claims that Apple is planning on replacing the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 14.1-inch model. It reportedly will include a mini-LED screen that would provide high contrast ratios, a wider color range and other image boosts. A refreshed 16-inch Macbook Pro with new display technology is also planned.

Surprisingly, given Apple pays the range little attention, a new range of iPads is also said to be on the way. Kuo claims that Apple is building a new 10.2-inch iPad and 7.9-inch iPad Mini both using mini-LED displays. A new 27-inch iMac Pro using the same mini-LED screen technology is also said to be under development, although that may be released later in the year instead.

The mini-LED is a new display technology that promises improved contrast ratios and deeper blacks compared to LCD panels that are lit with regular LEDs. As the name suggests, the technology uses smaller diodes than a regular LEDs to provide improved picture quality. How To Geek noted that although “mini-LED technology can’t quite match the picture quality of an OLED or micro-LED display, mini-LED models are much cheaper to produce.”

“The product research and development for mini-LED remain unaffected by the COVID-19,” Kuo said in his investor note. “The visibility for commercialization has even exceeded the expectations in our previous report.”

Photo: Duncan Riley