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They are making iphones in India just fine. They know how they would move if they needed to, they just need a reason.

Did you read the article?
"Apple has been cautious as Indian workers gain experience. Last year, it was hurtling ahead with a plan to make the iPhone 11 in India, a manufacturing first for a company that had long relied on China to assemble its newest models.
But the technology giant halted the effort before setting up a single manufacturing line for that device, a person familiar with the matter said. India wasn't ready to supply skilled labor or the robust infrastructure Apple expects. It opted to make the iPhone 11 in China instead.
Apple is unlikely to shift any of the production of its most expensive iPhones to India later this year, a person familiar with Foxconn's overseas operations said. The supply chain isn't in place, and workers in India aren't ready to produce the high-end, organic light-emitting diode models, this person said. Foxconn didn't immediately respond to a request for comment."
 
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I got a crazy idea. Bring home the troops. Call it a national security emergency. Invest the roughly $1 Trillion per year saved building infrastructure, investing in supply chain and other savings to rebuild our intellectual capital and stop policing the world. Maybe, I don't know, start reinvesting in semiconductor fabs, like the Chionese, South Korean and Taiwan governments all do.

We have a choice, police the world and fail, or invest in our people and succeed.

👏👏👏
 
Go watch American Factory on Netflix, they can't even make an automotive windscreen properly before some guy brings a union in, good luck putting together a bleeding-edge phone together without costing 5 fold in costs.

Some of you just need to accept every country has its strengths and weaknesses, the U.S is one of the strongest hubs for software and ideas, China/Asia is the strongest in manufacturing. Should be grateful the largest portion of profits are still pocketed by American companies.
 
As the manufacturing engine of the world, China also makes the upstream materials used in the manufacturing of products.

If you're manufacturing an LCD, you need the chemical substrates, glass, optical films, and backlight modules, all of which come from China. The idea that you can separate it and suddenly manufacture in India or the U.S. is just silly.

Tim Cook has talked about the skills available in China. This is exactly what he's referring to. Workers in other countries don't suddenly gain the skills to make and research the above mentioned items. It requires decades of government investment and focus on education.

its not just the skills. But the huge number of people with those particular skills in one place. That’s the most important part.
 
This is a failure in leadership on many levels. The intense focus on the bottom line is renowned for blindness in the lack of resiliency in manufacturing. Tim Cook has been caught with his pants down. I wonder if he will take responsibility?
 
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I got a crazy idea. Bring home the troops. Call it a national security emergency. Invest the roughly $1 Trillion per year saved building infrastructure, investing in supply chain and other savings to rebuild our intellectual capital and stop policing the world. Maybe, I don't know, start reinvesting in semiconductor fabs, like the Chionese, South Korean and Taiwan governments all do.

We have a choice, police the world and fail, or invest in our people and succeed.

In the US, the healthcare cost for your employees alone would crush your product pricing. Then there's the labor law, lack of supplier network, etc, etc. And don't forget China is one of the few countries in the world that has the rare earth resources that are needed to make electronics.

We are simply not equipped to be the mass manufacturer of the world. It would only make sense to produce high precision, small quantity and high value items (things like fighter jets, killer drones, missiles, see the pattern here?)
 
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Production on Apple's devices has been stymied in recent weeks due to delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak in China. Many of Apple's China-based suppliers had to shut down for two weeks or more in February, and there are still staffing issues as factories work to ramp up production around travel bans, quarantines, and other problems.

chinafoxconn.jpg

Amid the China coronavirus outbreak, which has caused Apple to announce that it won't make its March quarter revenue goals, The Wall Street Journal has taken a look at Apple's reliance on China and why Apple is likely to continue to be dependent on China for the foreseeable future.

Apple's operations team has been raising concerns about the company's reliance on China, and as early as 2015, there were suggestions that Apple relocate assembly of one or more products to Vietnam, allowing Apple to start training workers and creating component providers outside of China.

Senior managers shot down the idea at the time, and transitioning away from China has been "too challenging to undertake." Apple has, however, begun to move some production outside of China. Apple has moved AirPods Pro assembly to Vietnam due to tariffs, and now produces some iPhones in India, but a complete break "is impossible."

As The Wall Street Journal points out, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been downplaying the need for changes in the supply chain. On Friday, Cook said in an interview that if there are supply chain changes because of the coronavirus, it will be "adjusting some knobs, not some kind of wholesale fundamental change."

Apple is not able to break away from China because China has hundreds of thousands of employees, both skilled and unskilled, that have expertise in manufacturing Apple's devices.Should Apple decide to move production out of China, that could impact device sales in the country. China is responsible for close to a fifth of Apple's total revenue.

Apple's relationship with China began many years ago, when Foxconn began making iPods in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007. As Apple device sales have grown, the factories that assemble Apple devices have also grown in tandem, resulting in what The Wall Street Journal describes as a "triangle of interdependency."Apple did plan to assemble some iPhone 11 models in India, but the effort was halted before a single manufacturing line was set up, as Apple believed India was not ready to supply the skilled labor or robust infrastructure that Apple expects. iPhone 11 models were produced in China instead.

That's not likely to change in 2020 because there's no supply chain in place and workers in India aren't ready to produce the high-end iPhones that are expected to be released in 2020. As for U.S. production, Apple is manufacturing some Mac Pro models in the United States (those sold in the United States), but Mac Pro models sold in the rest of the world are still manufactured in China because the U.S. also doesn't have the skilled labor force that China has available.

The Wall Street Journal's full report on Apple's dependence on China can be read on The Wall Street Journal website.

Article Link: WSJ Examines Apple's Reliance on China Amid Coronavirus Outbreak
Not to worry, Uyghur force labor to the rescue, this is how china is fixing it and apple keeps a blind eye.
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In the US, the healthcare cost for your employees alone would crush your product pricing. Then there's the labor law, lack of supplier network, etc, etc. And don't forget China is one of the few countries in the world that has the rare earth resources that are needed to make electronics.

We are simply not equipped to be the mass manufacturer of the world. It would only make sense to produce high precision, small quantity and high value items (things like fighter jets, killer drones, missiles, see the pattern here?)
So ... innovate?
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its not just the skills. But the huge number of people with those particular skills in one place. That’s the most important part.
And the fact they can be forced to do the (btw low skilled) labor. And if no available china can summon more, now even uyghur are forced in to labor.. it’s a totalitarian regime, apple should not do business with them.. slavery cannot in any way be condoned, not even by proxy.
 
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Desi people will never be as productive as Chinese, no matter how much you pay them. Superiority complex.
 
China has a poor track record, history is nor on their side when it comes to pandemics. Just look at the last 15 years all major outbreaks were out of China.

Wow, you need to learn some facts. H1N1 (2009) came from Mexico actually.
 
Wrong fact. They never moved it to China. iPhone was manufactured in China by Foxxconn since day one.

many companies moved to China. Many companies would be able to make the shift back.

WOW. this is sad. Steve Wozniak and his wife might have the virus
they were both in Asia in January.



Calm down, it’s just the flu. He is not that old so he will be fine.
 
China has concentration camps for Muslims from the Uyghurs minority. At least 1 million are hold in these "re-education camps" where there is forced labour, brainwashing, torture and other human rights violation.

China also uses forced labour, including forced child labour.

In China there is no proper healthcare insurance for the workers, not to mention working standards.

China does violate freedom of transportation imprisoning large sections of the populations with travel bans and that is happening from years.

In China there is no private life, in fact they want to imprison everyone with their Black Mirror like project and there are already victims of this.

Internet in China is highly regulated by the government, every kind of democracy based language is strictly filtered. A lot of people don't even know about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests as it is a banned topic.

Most of the world's services like Google are banned in china. Everything is so strictly regulated that even Disney movies are pre-approved or edited specially for the Chinese communist party where commissaires provide the requests for edits.

China is a country with a communist dictatorship, where one party rules and decides everything without separation of the powers.

China is building illegal artificial war zone islands where they put their military in the so-called "south china sea", transforming it from an international and global hub to solely and military operated by China.

China is the #1 pollutant in the world.

I wonder why is Apple still there?

There is no freedom of speech, there are are huge human right violations, one of the last communist dictatorships in the world.

Again, what is Apple doing there?

I find it hypocritical for Tim to talk about gender equality, social rights, Women's marches, Women's rights, diversity and other good words when Apple is investing in a communist dictatorship that is all against it.
 
Facts don't matter to them, only emotions. Emotions over statistics, science and facts.

It's so paradoxical that they defend a communist totalitarian dictatorship that enslaves people and violates human rights on such a level that is making one of the most unjust country right now and these social justice warriors should be actually fighting that.

In my country we had 45 years of state driven socialism and we were ruled by a singular dictatorship throw a communist party. They say everything bad started when freedom of speech was seized and political association was troubled. The first thing communists did was to label everyone else a "fascist". Everyone that was for a traditional family, for Christianity, for the monarchy and for democracy was labeled a "nazi" and a "fascist". Hundreds of thousands were brutally killed after that.

The young Western generation that is defending communist dictatorships never had these criminal regimes running their countries and do not understand how serious that subject is.

Apple should do the right thing and defend human rights by pulling out of China! If they really are part of those "awake" companies that they claim they are.

Let me not start with the handshakes of Tim Cook with the Saudi Arabia prince - a country where women are treated worse than farm animals, have almost no rights, are killed with rocks and covered and treated like objects. Not to mention LGBTQ people which are killed.

It's all a hypocrisy! Countries like China and Saudi Arabia have not achieved even 15% of what the Western world did in terms of human rights, worker rights and minority rights, yet SJWs are worried about first world problems there and do not look how their "icons" are actually playing with the Devil.
 
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