Apple Reportedly Seeking to Move Significantly More Production From China to India

[FreakinEurekan]

The move to India has very little to do with profit margin - that's just fine now, with manufacturing in China. It has all to do with opening Apple Retail Stores and Apple repair centers in India. In order to do that, Apple must manufacture a certain percentage of products there.

For those who say "Move production to the USA" - who are you going to get to staff those factories, and who is going to pay the prices necessary for something made in them? You want to have an American-made chair or fishing rod or whatever, sure. It's just not practical, on the scale of manufacturing a product like iPhone.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

The jobs went to China because of competition. Certainly many did not for any number of reasons. What is certain is that we aren't talking about them now because they no longer exist. You see, that's what happens when you try to fight tide like forces like global competition. You relearn the theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest where you adapt or die.

But China was always there, waiting for our jobs. So why then? Tax cuts... The investor class got too keep more of their profits, and they could label them differently. It was all about the cash. Heck, both of my sisters worked at companies in the early and mid stages of offshoring jobs, and they would rant for hours about the problems they encountered. Quanity was a new concept.

One sister worked in IT, and the other in manufacturing.

The IT was being sent to India, and the problems were so bad, the company tried to force some of their quality control people to actually MOVE there. One that took the offer, and a big pay raise, quite within a month. Errors were rampant. Fixes were often missing in subsequent releases, and just getting some concepts across to the people just failed.

The other sister had so many quality issues. The did, among other things, molds for for injection molded parts. They would send over drawings of the molds, and the code to make them, and the parts would come back wrong. They started making the molds themselves, and shipping them over to be put into production (weak environmental laws in China) and the parts would come back screwed up somehow. Once, they flew their engineers over to meet with the production people, and got there to an empty room. Everyone had gone home. She ended up telling me they would ahve been far ahead if they had just kept the whole process here, but some suppliers (Walmart) were demanding that they move production to China, or some other insanely low wage country.

Yeah, it wasn't 'competition'. That was a lie to beat down the American Workers. There was no way that American Workers could compete with people that make around a 10 dollars a week. Absolutely no way on this plpanet or any other. It was all about beating down wages, unions, and laws and regulations. Period...
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This also perfectly sums up the divide in the MacRumors comments section:

• Those who want the best products from Apple to make their lives better
• Those who defend how much Apple is profiting as a business

I am missing your point. Your question is like asking if I brought my lunch, or like the color blue. Sorry...
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This whole thing has been a big lesson not to have all your eggs in one basket.


One of the big drivers of offshoring work was that if your competition moved their manufacturing to China, you couldn't afford not to. It gave them airspace to strategically undercut you. It was a chain reaction, unfortunately.

Okay, but they did it for profit. I bought Klipsch speakers. Klipsch used to be a solid, good name.

The speakers SUCKED! They were for computers, and the speakers used 9mm patch cables to interconnect them, and the jacks were oversized slightly. As a result the cables would sometimes not make a connection, and a channel would drop out. Klipsch used to be 'proudly made in America', and those were made in China. Quality was an after thought. They were after profit, and dragging their good name through the mud in a Chinese street for it. I was very disappointed. Such a solid company, ruining their name. Sad...

Just because everyone else jumps headfirst into a dumpster, doesn't mean you should too...

And don't get me started on hand tools... It's depressing.

 

[Stevie jobz 2.0]

Such as?

iPhone designs are typically locked 1 year in advance to give Apple logistics enough time to source for parts. So the iPhone would have been locked in by the end of last year, so it’s really not possible for Apple to see what the competition was doing last year, and attempt to copy and force fit it in within such a short period of time.

If the iPhone comes out with a similar feature this year, it makes more sense that they already stated working on it years ago, and the apparent later release date is because it takes more time to refine and integrate it properly with the OS, as opposed to just throwing it out there.

It was banter mate, I think you are taking this stuff a tad too serious.. 🤔

 

[topmounter]

Don't worry yourselves too much, I'm sure this decision received the conditional blessing of Emperor Xi.

 

[T-R-S]

I've been to India sorry but that's from the kettle into the fire. On the upside for Apple wages are even lower in India than China....

 

[anthogag]

This is good. India is a democracy. China's communist government appears to be on the path to being a Western foe.

China's goal appears to be to transfer Western tech to China and secure its own resources infrastructure with its "one road one belt" initiative around the world and then be totally indifferent to Western concerns. It is also going through a significant military build-up.

For example the Chinese government could care less about Western concerns about climate change pollution and the threat of tariffs would be laughed at because the Chinese could say your Western companies are bigger in China than in your home markets. We don't need you, you need us.

 

[iDento]

Apple scheming again to pay as little as possible for manufacturing while increasing prices.

While all other corporations we know are striving to pay as much as possible for manufacturing while lowering prices.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I ran a computer company for over 40 years. You want to lecture me on 'business'?

It's funny, I remember when 'business' meant helping your employees to have a better life. Employers cared about the people they employed. When a business announced massive layoffs, their stock took a hit. Back then, that meant the company was struggling, back then it meant that the end could be near. Then something changed. I remember watching CNBC, and major corporations announced massive job cuts, and their stock went up. Investors knew those jobs were going to China, or elsewhere, and the corporation would start reaping higher profits. The products didn't get better, the production of them got drastically cheaper. To go from a high labor cost to an almost literally zero labor cost is why these corporations were making huge profits, and the investor class lined up at the capital gains trough. My company used to sell to the residential market, and that ended. We sold to the business market and that ended too. Clients and customers went bankrupt because of the drive for profit.

Profit above all is evil. Profit above all is inhumane. Corporations were not started to enrich the investors, they were started to enrich the workers, and the areas they were located. Things changed, and not for the better. But, by all means, keep trying to lecture me on 'business'. This could prove humorous...

Wonderful! This is exactly the Great Again that MAGA appeals to. Unfortunately, those that it appeals to enough to vote for it don't realise that the guy selling it to them can't deliver it, because he doesn't believe in the part where "Employers cared about the people they employed", or "Corporations were not started to enrich the investors, they were started to enrich the workers, and the areas they were located", which are the true keys to Great Again.

 

[riteshritesh]

Okay, but they did it for profit. I bought Klipsch speakers. Klipsch used to be a solid, good name.

The speakers SUCKED! They were for computers, and the speakers used 9mm patch cables to interconnect them, and the jacks were oversized slightly. As a result the cables would sometimes not make a connection, and a channel would drop out. Klipsch used to be 'proudly made in America', and those were made in China. Quality was an after thought. They were after profit, and dragging their good name through the mud in a Chinese street for it. I was very disappointed. Such a solid company, ruining their name. Sad...
Just because everyone else jumps headfirst into a dumpster, doesn't mean you should too...
And don't get me started on hand tools... It's depressing.

I fail to understand how quality issues come in the picture when Production is outsourced? Had those speakers been manufactured in USA, they would have had the same issues.
I don't think it has anything to do with the country where goods are manufactured, because everything from QC to equipments to labour training, is done by the parent company as per their standards with no compromises. They have parent company implants in the foreign country to oversee operations.
I think your concern is with job losses more than anything else.Like others have mentioned, the scales are too big for the American labour market to keep up with the requirement, than profits arising out of saving wages by outsourcing.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I fail to understand how quality issues come in the picture when Production is outsourced? Had those speakers been manufactured in USA, they would have had the same issues.
I don't think it has anything to do with the country where goods are manufactured, because everything from QC to equipments to labour training, is done by the parent company as per their standards with no compromises. They have parent company implants in the foreign country to oversee operations.
I think your concern is with job losses more than anything else.Like others have mentioned, the scales are too big for the American labour market to keep up with the requirement, than profits arising out of saving wages by outsourcing.

Oh come on now.

Remember the dog food poisoning epidemic? Corporations just do not care.

Walmart selling lead based paint children's toys? Cadmium girls jewelry? Things with batteries that blow up and catch fire.

You can't make something for the absolute bottom dollar and include things in the design like not blowing up apparently.

And corporate America DID NOT CARE! They were getting their stuff made for the cheapest amount of money possible, and got to charge a premium price for it. That it was killing pets, children, the environment didn't even enter into their thought process. And investors made out like bandits. Oh, and remember the 'slave labor' for Kathy Lee Gifford clothing? It's more widespread than you could ever imagine. If you don't care about human life, there are a wide array of places to manufacture your stuff. Cheaply too.

 

[Aston441]

Discretion os the better part of valor.

I'm just amazed. India seems to be a new hell hole that business has found to exploit the natives, and extract huge profits. It's sad... I bought Aleve, and it's 'made in India'. Why? Why would a drug company make something we take in our bodies in hell holes like India, China, and elsewhere. The drive of profit above all has to stop. It's ruining peoples lives.

It doesn't have to stop.

Simple import tariffs solve the problem immediately, as honorable men understood, and implemented, even many hundreds of years ago.

Of course when honorable men try to do this today, they are called every horrible name and called everything but honorable, by evil, evil two faced sociopathic liars.

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

Companies have been eyeballing nearby countries (e.g. India) to move manufacturing into from China for a while now. I think this is an economics decision and unrelated to COVID. These discussions began before the pandemic.

While I agree that at this point that you would be hard pressed to find an individual that does not want to retaliate against China for their crimes (not being as transparent about COVID from day 1 as they should have been is only the tip of the iceberg), bringing manufacturing back to the US is not a smart decision for many reasons. Whether you like it or not, the economy is global now, and is not going back to the way it was decades ago. By Apple not using the most economical form of manufacturing from a globalized perspective, they make themselves less competitive in the marketplace, which as an American company, actually would hurt the US economy at the end of the day. I'd strongly recommend you read up on economics and why isolationist economics hurts a country in the long-run.

All this said, government should play a role in ensuring wealth inequality doesn't happen. Unfortunately in the US, the federal government is more concerned about lining their own pockets with lobbyist money, than the welfare of their constituents. In a capitalistic model, businesses aren't going to always think people first, but rather profits first. Apple is just playing by the broken rules of the US federal government. If priority was put on jobs and income equality vs. stock prices, then you would see the general public benefit vs. the 1%, but that hasn't been the tone of the US economy for a while now.

You'll note that he said "more of it" to America, and "all of it" out of China (possibly to India or elsewhere). That's not isolationist economics, that's good sense.

 

[Tech198]

"Designed by Apple in California. Manufactured in India"

I hope the quality is not gonna go down.

 

[AlexGraphicD]

This is good. India is a democracy. China's communist government appears to be on the path to being a Western foe.

China's goal appears to be to transfer Western tech to China and secure its own resources infrastructure with its "one road one belt" initiative around the world and then be totally indifferent to Western concerns. It is also going through a significant military build-up.

For example the Chinese government could care less about Western concerns about climate change pollution and the threat of tariffs would be laughed at because the Chinese could say your Western companies are bigger in China than in your home markets. We don't need you, you need us.

Fair point. But it is so depressing the thought that an american company like Apple has no choice and MUST build its products outside of the US in a foreign developing country. I mean, why? Are we certain this is the only way? I just don't buy it. And even if apple would fully automate the manufacturing process in the US as some people say, I would still prefer it a million times than producing in china or india.