A string of worker suicides forced Foxconn to move to improve conditions at its plants last year.

News of the explosion comes as Apple has recently completed international launches of the iPad 2, raising demand for the second-iteration of the popular tablet device. Apple is currently showing shipping times of .

The explosion also comes on top of the impact from the Japanese earthquake. That disaster created a component shortage for tablet devices, affecting everything from to , although there's no evidence this has affected production of Apple products.

Time will tell whether Apple enthusiasts are swayed in their purchasing decisions by the developments abroad. The company is lucky this didn't happen during the holiday season, when there is a crush of people snapping up consumer electronics.

The company's stock price slipped 1.6 percent following Friday's news. It's still trading near a 52-week high.