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Manufacturing today’s technology is not our grandparents’ manufacturing. Putting screws in a Chevy door today for a living wage is old school and long gone. Today, manufacturing requires very special talents. China has developed these talents over decades. First off, why would they allow that talent to work competitively? Not going to happen. China is showing our current leadership how outdated, old school, and not the sharpest knives in the drawer they really are when it comes to today’s manufacturing. We need age limits on POTUS and Congress. Outdated thinking, the way it was, is not going to work going forward.
 
Which demonstrates two key principles:
  • Never single-source anything important, and
  • Never rely upon China or Russia for anything important.
Both are potential paths to total failure. Hopefully Apple retained enough US based engineering skill to train up staff at their Indian Foxconn branch... but with this CCP interference, it sounds an awful lot like they're also going to have to eventually divest themselves entirely of their Foxconn relationship, and work with an Indian company to stand up the necessary facilities.
I'd be equally afraid of USA for anything important.
 
lol. Someone is playing Checkers. While the other is playing Chess…. I can only imagine that this isn’t the only industry that China is doing this too
 
We need age limits on POTUS and Congress.
Yass!👏👏👏

We have people the business world would consider no longer productive running the country.
Outdated thinking, the way it was, is not going to work going forward.
It not the outdated thinking the bothers me. It's that they don't give a rat's (_!_) about anyone but themselves. They don't care about climate change, they don't care about the future. They'll be dead before it affects them. The FAFO doesn't affect them. They get to FA without dealing with the FO. Their grand kids will suffer the after effects.
 
Shareholders won’t like it, but it’s the right thing to do.
Then yeah that’s the problem because shareholders hate doing the right thing.
He did indeed. He just could not find lines of good Americans signing up to spend long hours assembling iPhones at 3$ per hour. What a pity.
Maybe after enough migrants flee the country we can finally find some “homegrown” to screw those tiny screws? Maybe give them $5/hr. That might work.
 
I am wondering about the quality of the phones assembled in India. Will Apple give an indication of the assembly location on a phone’s box?
Assembling iPhones in India isn’t anything new (see below from 2017 for the iPhone SE), all models of the iPhone 16 lineup are already also being made in India, and yes they do indicate it:

1751474783679.jpeg


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1751475125136.jpeg
 
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Every time I see this photo, I think I’d never trust that pink communist piggy with anything, even assembling a paper box.
 
As my homie Tony from LC Signs would say:

Don’t Care!! Anyway here is the latest iPhone 17 Pro assembled in india.
 
the reasons for Chinese success in its manufacturing include:

1 USA/Western European large international companies transfer of production techniques
2 adherence to ISO quality standards

but the thing that is rarely mentioned but has been crucial for the growth and ability of Chinese manufacturing ability has been that branded customers have been paying incrementally more for Chinese made products over the course of the last 30 years which allowed a great class of middle level Chinese factory personnel to be developed. these production and quality control and lab testing middle level Chinese managers are the real reason why Made in China has been good for USA and Western consumers.

the macrumors article points out a distinction in just who has been moving out of India.
the article says the PRC factory personnel are moving out. but the Taiwanese managers are still in place.

we can assume the the PRC government encouraged Foxconn for these PRC personnel to be taken out of India.
but this strategy to delay India full scale production only might delay things but a short few months at most.
equivalent Indian middle level factory personnel who start out with a basic ability might need about 12 - 18 months to become just as capable as the PRC personnel they need to replace, if the Foxconn senior managers stay in place.

much like china, India's huge number of people seeking entry into the middle income bracket will be able to continue for a good 30 years, so this critical middle level factory management class will be able to progress much like how the PRC model progressed.

the title of the macrumors article: "Apple's India Manufacturing Dream in Jeopardy Over Exodus of Chinese Workers" is very much overstated. probably to get clicks.
 
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He did indeed. He just could not find lines of good Americans signing up to spend long hours assembling iPhones at 3$ per hour. What a pity.
But the minimum wage in those Red States is $7.25 per hour. So $3 per hour is "out" in any case.

Funny thing is that "cheap labor" in China is about $6.50 per hour. That is a barely livable wage in China, but not too much different (75 cents) from the US Federal minimum wage.

The cost of living in rural Alabama is not much different from China. China is no longer the land of poor starving peasant farmers. People there live in high-rise apartment buildings and drive electric cars. Most of the people in China do NOT work in iPhone factories making $6.50. The normal income for a family of four is about $40K. Rent is between $600 and $1,200 per month. Of course, it varies very widely

Chinese universities graduate "hundreds of thousands of engineers every year, dramatically more than US universities do. These guys make good money. More than most Americans do.

The US, if you look only at the interior and ignore both the East and West Coasts, is dirt-poor. People there actually want Walmart jobs. Remember when "Candidate Trump" promised to put them back to work in coal mines, and they cheered? You have to be desperate to cheer when someone says they will send you into a coal mine.

The point is that no one goes to China for "cheap labor", we have that in Mississippi. They go there for the manufacturing expertise and deep supply chain, all done at a reasonable cost.

Another example of not-cheap labor is the Chinese Tesla factory. The cost to build a Tesla in China is not much different from the cost in Texas. Robots work for free in both places.
 
the reasons for Chinese success in its manufacturing include:

1 USA/Western European large international companies transfer of production techniques
That was true years ago, but it's flipped.

Here is a recent quote from Ford's current CEO, Jim Farley, after traveling to China to see what they are doing...
"It's the most humbling thing I have ever seen,"

That pretty much says it all. Well almost. The quote continues...

"I don't like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi,"

"We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I've been driving it for six months now, and I don't want to give it up,"

Ford's CEO is driving a Chinese car likely to remind him of what Ford needs to be making. This ois not some random YouTuber making stuff up, it's Ford's CEO.
 
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Why can't they automate much of the work?
That way manufacturing can come back to the U.S.
 
This kind of move is always self defeating.
The USA blocking AI chips from China only pushes China to develop their chip industry.
China blocking its engineers from India will only push India and Apple to train a local workforce independent of China.

Kinda funny/sad that China and the USA use the same idiotic tactics on each other.
 
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