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Remind me again why Apple can’t have their products manufactured in the USA?

The main plausible excuse I’ve seen is supply chain. All the parts are manufactured around the same place. All the raw materials go there and the finished goods come from there. Apparently nowhere else has that infrastructure set up.

Also Steve Jobs told Barack Obama that it would take at least ten years to make up the education and manufacturing base gap. Well that was more than ten years ago and the US didn’t work hard in that direction so nothing has changed.

And yes of course there is the issue of human rights and wages. We don’t think it’s ok to lock our workers into their factories for months at a time, for one thing.
 
Doesn't work. India is not a part of RCEP, so no RECP countries, especially China, will accept anything from India without hefty tariffs. The best bet would be the US market.

My comment was sarcasm with a laughing emoji. Who cares about China anymore? They are done and dusted. Even their Premier (now under house arrest) knows it. Gimme India made iPhone any day!! Been using India made iPhone 12 since 2 years. Flawless device.
 
I do not think Apple actualy manufactures anything themselves do they? it's all contracted out to other companies.
 
Remind me again why Apple can’t have their products manufactured in the USA?

Many many factors are involved, limited number of skilled workers plus limited number of workers willing to do manufacturing work, workers rights, workers wages, rules and regulation red tape, business taxes, health and safety rules and regulations, changes in the dollar exchange rate, shipping costs, rental costs, utility costs, workers union.

China and India have virtually none of those issues. The biggest advantage both countries have to labour. If a person is no good or even a group of people are no good, they can be replaced instantly because there is always an over abundance of people wanting those jobs meaning the factory does not have to close due to lack of workers. This is not the case in the US. I mean look at it this way, manufacturing is 24/7 now, if Foxxcon wanted to lets say build a manufacturing plant in Ohio and they wanted it to run 24/7, it would need 3 shifts of approx 1000 workers, so that is 3000 workers. How easy would it be for Foxxcon to find 3000 people in Ohio willing to do shift work for minimum pay and how long would Foxxcon be able to keep hold of those employee's without many of them leaving because they do not like it with the resulting impact being production lines stop due to lack of workers. How easy would it be to find replacements? not so easy i bet but with China and India, not a problem.
 
iPhones are too expensive for millions and millions of India’s mobile users. The Apple phones (at least 14’s) are for export.
Not really there are wealthy people in India too and Apple products are popular.they’ve been assembling other iPhones there for some time but only for Indian market.
 
hope they would shift fully to India and Vietnam. manufacturing in China has been a pain for many businesses.
Vietnam is fine ,Samsung been making their phones there but India is just not known for electronics assembly or quality.
Apple is a premium brand and shouldn’t do this.
 
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Also Steve Jobs told Barack Obama that it would take at least ten years to make up the education and manufacturing base gap. Well that was more than ten years ago and the US didn’t work hard in that direction so nothing has changed.
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I don't think that's the real reason. Take Samsung for instance - the company is Apple's #1 competitor and also the largest smartphone maker in the world. It took them only about 3-4 years to build out all necessary infrastructure in a country previously known for agragrian and textile output/exports and move South along with 200+ suppliers out of China. Samsung closed out their last China smartphone operation in 2019.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to bring low-tech, low-value assembly/packaging/testings part of the supply-chain to the US, but that's not b/c there is some sort of "education" or "manufacturing" base gap.
 
I don't think that's the real reason. Take Samsung for instance - the company is Apple's #1 competitor and also the largest smartphone maker in the world. It took them only about 3-4 years to build out all necessary infrastructure in a country previously known for agragrian and textile output/exports and move South along with 200+ suppliers out of China. Samsung closed out their last China smartphone operation in 2019.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to bring low-tech, low-value assembly/packaging/testings part of the supply-chain to the US, but that's not b/c there is some sort of "education" or "manufacturing" base gap.

Moving to Korea from China is different than moving to the United States.

Not sure what you mean took 3-4 years, and how you consider Korea to be an agrarian country in the timeline we’re talking about. Samsung had been operating many business units for many years and Korea has been known for technology manufacturing for some time now and not just Samsung.

Maybe it took them 3-4 years to move their smartphone business out of China and into Korea, but if anything that should tell you just how difficult it would be for Apple to move it to the US. Seems like ten years is about right then, and that’s if the government and industry is serious about it, which they have not been until very recently.

To be clear I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, just that we shouldn’t be surprised it hasn’t yet. Nobody has taken it seriously, and I don’t mean just Apple.

We’ve been digging this hole for ourselves regarding China for at least the last 30 years. No surprise now when we look up and can barely see the sky anymore from the bottom. I seem to recall someone a few years ago making it an issue but that seems to have gone away…
 
Vietnam is fine ,Samsung been making their phones there but India is just not known for electronics assembly or quality.
Apple is a premium brand and shouldn’t do this.
I don’t know if you actually live in tech world or not but Samsung has largest factory in the world for mobile phone in India. India makes 28% mobile phone in the world.

 
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Moving to Korea from China is different than moving to the United States.

Not sure what you mean took 3-4 years, and how you consider Korea to be an agrarian country in the timeline we’re talking about. Samsung had been operating many business units for many years and Korea has been known for technology manufacturing for some time now and not just Samsung.

Maybe it took them 3-4 years to move their smartphone business out of China and into Korea, but if anything that should tell you just how difficult it would be for Apple to move it to the US. Seems like ten years is about right then, and that’s if the government and industry is serious about it, which they have not been until very recently.

To be clear I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, just that we shouldn’t be surprised it hasn’t yet. Nobody has taken it seriously, and I don’t mean just Apple.

We’ve been digging this hole for ourselves regarding China for at least the last 30 years. No surprise now when we look up and can barely see the sky anymore from the bottom. I seem to recall someone a few years ago making it an issue but that seems to have gone away…
a few missed points there:

1) Samsung moved to Vietnam, not South Korea.
2) Yes, Vietnam was mostly agrarian and text-tile oriented economy before Samsung's move starting circa 2014.
3) there is no such thing as 10 years of "education and manufacturing base" gap to fill in low-tech, low-value "assemblypackaging" sector.
4) folks who work at Apple's Foxconn factorise are likewise mostly young, unskilled, poor laborers from rural China or other undeveloped regions.
5) most high-value, high-tech parts such as AP/radio/modem (US, Taiwan), display (S Korea), battery (Japan, S Korea), camera (Japan), memory/storage (US, S Korea), glass (US) supply-chain exist outside China. Even to date, China still accounts for only about 8% of all semiconductor chips produced globally.
7) As Samsung has demonstrated, there is absolutely no reason why Apple's smartphone operation has to be in China or can't be moved elsewhere.
8) The US and South Korea are highly developed countries with highly-paid, highly skilled laborers. Their competitive advantage is in high-value, high-tech supply-chain; not low-tech, low-value assembly/packaging/testing.
9) As Marc Rubio recently called out, in spite of the geopolitical tension, Apple is still going out of their way to source more materials and chips from China (eg, most recently YMTC), purely out of their desperation to please Xi.
 
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Very nice, the sooner we get away from China, the better. Helped them enrich their state enough already..
Spoken like someone who has never learned anything about history or China.

People forget that just 200 years ago, China had a higher GDP than Europe and the US combined. This significant advantage was eroded by drugs, colonialism, and wars. Unfortunately, people still think that the rise of modern China is a fluke and only because they steal US tech or US helped them. You can argue that China is simply regaining its world status that it had before it was eroded by the West.


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India isn't far off from what China is these days. Things are really turning bad over there.

I don't know where you get your news at, but this is simply not true.

Spoken like someone who has never learned anything about history or China.

People forget that just 200 years ago, China had a higher GDP than Europe and the US combined. This significant advantage was eroded by drugs, colonialism, and wars. Unfortunately, people still think that the rise of modern China is a fluke and only because they steal US tech or US helped them. You can argue that China is simply regaining its world status that it had before it was eroded by the West.

Yeah, but in light of what Russia is doing, one can say it is not wise for the West to depend so much on an authoritarian state anymore. Diversifying won't hurt anyone.
 
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I don’t know if you actually live in tech world or not but Samsung has largest factory in the world for mobile phone in India. India makes 28% mobile phone in the world.

Samsung makes it's flagship / higher end devices in Vietnam / Korea / China
It's only their budget low end devices that are made in India and I think only for certain Asian market,the rest of budget line is made in China.

I've never seen any Samsung device that says made in India and I work in a firm that buys/sells refurbished electronic devices online.

Apple only makes premium / mid range
Samsung makes premium / midrange but also lots of cheap low end products as well.

different business models.
 
The Fact is Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. So it really depends on if Apple wanna invest outside of China. Not if Foxconn wanna open another factory. Because for Foxconn, China is just a big factory.
 
Samsung makes it's flagship / higher end devices in Vietnam / Korea / China
It's only their budget low end devices that are made in India and I think only for certain Asian market,the rest of budget line is made in China.

I've never seen any Samsung device that says made in India and I work in a firm that buys/sells refurbished electronic devices online.

Apple only makes premium / mid range
Samsung makes premium / midrange but also lots of cheap low end products as well.

different business models.

There is no Samsung smartphone operation in China. The company's smartphone division completely pulled out of China in 2019 -- there are however some ODMs, eg, Wingtech, making low-end devices under Samsung's name in China. Their premium flagship devices are made in South Korea and Vietnam. Samsung India is mostly for domestic market -- to work around India's high import tariff.
 
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