it's discouraging for a lot of reasons. for people, like s. jobs and other visionaries, are not limited in their perspective or held to boundaries for excellence. there is something missing, imo, when ideas, developers, creative minds and executive searches are supposed to be limited to the area between the atlantic and pacific oceans. it feels like such a micro view of the real world, when wildly successful people who understand global issues exist outside our borders. it's a healthy business step, another in a long line of efforts to excel by apple, some of which hit home runs, some are misses, but at least they reach out beyond the parochial perspective in their thinking.
Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) have almost half of the world's population between them. Selling Apple products in those countries needs to address the uniqueness of each market and for that matter, submarket of each country.
A few years back, I read how the European manager of McDonald's turned sales around by creating sit down restaurants with a more cozy and up scale atmosphere than the sterile and kid-friendly places in the US. Sometimes it takes someone from within to address issues that simply go over an outsider's head.
I notice most people taking issue with my comment are not in America, which is understandable. I completely understand that the world is becoming a smaller place and that there are many talented and bright people in it. However, there are many talented and bright people here also, some of which already have international ties. There are plenty of US companies with internationail sales that are successful and the last time I checked, we had a pretty diverse melting pot of races. Asian, Black, Middle Eastern, Hispanic. My issue is that we, Americans, are not in the best financial situation. We have to do what we can to keep our businesses in America thriving, in America. This is not just about Apple, it's about America in general and I'd like to see our country survive the next Millennium.
There is nothing wrong with the pride of seeing - Made in America stamped on the product.
Where would Apple be without Jonathan Ives?
Apple hasn't been an American company for years now. Foreign sales have accounted for more than 40% of the total for a long time and I'm sure if you were to include sales to all those VAT avoiders taking advantage of the weak dollar
it would surpass 50%.
Apple is in the process of creating the 'Mothership' in Cupertino. Do you know why? because Apple has been hiring tens of thousands of employees and needs a lot more space. These aren't low paid Walmart jobs either, but jobs with a future, excellent benefits and a workplace free of racism and homophobia.
I'll bet a lot of those people come from the far reaches of the planet and believe it or not, that is why Apple and Silicon Valley in general has been the birthplace of so much amazing technology for the last few decades. Diversity breeds creativity.
