Flooding in central China takes toll on smartphone makers

Employees with Lenovo Group Ltd test mobile phones at the company's plant in Wuhan, Hubei province. [Photo/China Daily]

Serious flooding in central China is affecting some smartphone vendors, with a factory besieged by water, aftersale services partially suspended and online retailers short of products.

Lenovo Group Ltd, a leading handset maker in China, said its newly released smartphone ZUK Z2 would be temporarily unavailable on online shopping platforms, due to heavy flooding in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.

"This morning, our factory in Wuhan was besieged by water, and we have sent more than 2,000 workers out of the plant to safe places," Chen Xudong, senior vice-president of Lenovo, said on Wednesday.

According to his post on Sina Weibo, the flood receded at night, but because the downpour has seriously affected local traffic, e-commerce sites would temporarily be short of the ZUK Z2 smartphones.

"Please visit bricks-and-mortar stores for our products," Chen said.

It is not immediately clear how big the Wuhan plant's production capacity is and when online sales of ZUK Z2 will be resumed.

But local media outlet Hubei Daily reported that Lenovo has poured 5 billion yuan ($748 million) to build the Wuhan production base, which spans an area of about 126,000 square meters.

Lenovo is just one of tech companies that have suffered from the heavy rainfall in central China.

As of Wednesday, the torrential rainfall in Hubei has already caused direct economic damage worth 18.1 billion yuan, the provincial government said.

The Shenzhen-based smartphone vendor Shenzhen OnePlus Science & Technology Co Ltd also issued a statement on Sina Weibo on Wednesday, warning that the deluge has affected its customer service center in Wuhan.

Fu Liang, an industry expert, said: "The current spate of floods will have some short-term impacts on smartphone vendors' sales, but would not cause long-term changes."