Posted on 09/05/2020 7:22:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Take a look at the back of the box from which you unpacked your iPhone and you'll see this: "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China."
Reading this tagline might trigger a vision in your mind of Jonathan Ive, Apple's legendary chief design officer, dropping the drawings and technical specs for the next-generation iPhone into a (highly secure) shared folder that its low-cost suppliers in China can access as they manufacture and assemble the product by the millions.
But as Apple CEO Tim Cook recently pointed out, this picture wouldn't tell the entire story of how an iPhone actually gets made today, or why Apple prefers to make them in China. At the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou in early December (my firm, McKinsey & Company, was the Knowledge Partner), I listened to Cook as he explained why Apple continues to favor China as its central base for manufacturing iPhones:
The number one reason why we like to be in China is the people. China has extraordinary skills. And the part that's the most unknown is there's almost two million application developers in China that write apps for the iOS App Store. These are some of the most innovative mobile apps in the world, and the entrepreneurs that run them are some of the most inspiring and entrepreneurial in the world. Those are sold not only here but exported around the world.
Highly skilled software developers developing apps for the App Store are one reason Apple likes to be in China. But the depth of highly skilled labor in the manufacturing space is why Apple makes its iPhones there:
China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like. The thing that most people focus on if they're a foreigner coming to China is the size of the market, and obviously it's the biggest market in the world in so many areas. But for us, the number one attraction is the quality of the people.
Citing an example of the type of a highly skilled supplier Apple works closely with, Cook talked at length about recently visiting one company that it has collaborated with for several years:
I visited ICT--they manufacture, among other things, the AirPods for us. When you think about AirPods as a user, you might think it couldn't be that hard because it's really small. The AirPods have several hundred components in them, and the level of precision embedded into the audio quality--without getting into really nerdy engineering--it's really hard. And it requires a level of skill that's extremely high.
And the idea that Apple simply hands over the design to a company like ICT, which just manufacturers according to spec, is simply untrue, says Cook:
It's not designed and sent over--that sounds like there's no interaction. The truth is, the process engineering and process development associated with our products require innovation in and of itself. Not only the product but the way that it's made, because we want to make things in the scale of hundreds of millions, and we want the quality level of zero defects. That's always what we strive for, and the way that you get there, particularly when you're pushing the envelope in the type of materials that you have, and the precision that your specifications are forcing, requires a kind of hand-in-glove partnership. You don't do it by throwing it over the chasm. It would never work. I can't imagine how that would be.
Addressing the designed-in-California, made-in-low-cost-China impression that many people have--an impression reinforced by the tagline that is printed on every box containing a new iPhone--Cook had this to say:
There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low-labor-cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.
And China has an abundance of skilled labor unseen elsewhere, says Cook:
The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.
Cook credits China's vast supply of highly skilled vocational talent:
The vocational expertise is very very deep here, and I give the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that even when others were de-emphasizing vocational. Now I think many countries in the world have woke up and said this is a key thing and we've got to correct that. China called that right from the beginning.
This article also appeared on LinkedIn.
Watch the entire interview with Tim Cook at the Fortune Global Forum:
It would almost be less tragic if the reason given was that manufacturing costs were exceptionally high in the US, but what Cook was saying essentially is that the Chinese are smarter and more innovative than us.
If he believes that, then why does he think this is so? He votes for and advocates for liberals - the same liberals who run our US educational system. Are they failing the US Mr. Cook?
Further, as the first $2-Trillion dollar company in America, shouldn't Apple be able to develop it's own ‘robotic’ manufacturing - IN the US? Shouldn't they invest in that?
I am quite sure, without a doubt, that there are other inventors, developers, and entrepreneurs out there who can out innovate Cook and Apple. Cook and Apple should be grateful. Not arrogant and dismissive.
And Tracfone is owned by Carlos Slim the Mexican billionaire who bankrolls the NY Times.
And you totally missed the point.
It’s much more than the slave and child labor. In China, Apple doesn’t have to comply with US environmental laws and regulations . . . manufacturers can discharge waste directly into the air and the waters. In China, US wage and hour regulations don’t apply. In China, even as assembly employees are killed or commit suicide at work, Apple isn’t liable. Insurance, sex discrimination, racial inequalities . . . none is of concern in China, as they would surely be if Apple manufactured in the US. But Apple needs to avoid all the costs associated with its political advocacy.
Did he explain why he hates Americans making Apple’s products?
“The number one reason why we like to be in China is the people. China has extraordinary skills. “
AND THEY GIVE AWAY FREE CHINA VIRUS!
(has anyone seen anything about iPhones being sterilized before packaging for sale?)
“And the part that’s the most unknown is there’s almost two million application developers in China that write apps for the iOS App Store. These are some of the most innovative mobile apps in the world, and the entrepreneurs that run them are some of the most inspiring and entrepreneurial in the world. Those are sold not only here but exported around the world.”
And every app done by an app developer in China is sending your data BACK TO CHINA so the chicomm govt can build up their dossier on American.
****
I will admit to being partial to iPhones (over the inexpensive androids I have used) but I curse sodomite / China asskissing Tim Cook to hell.
LG is based in South Korea.
Although LG has its main headquarters in Seoul,South Korea.
Although Apple has its main headquarters in Cupertino, California, USA.
I tagged that list of Consumer Electronic brand name makers who have their products assembled by Foxconn in China with the country where they are headquartered, i.e., technically owned and/or publicly traded. That is also where they pay their income taxes. Foxconn’s payroll taxes are paid in China for its twenty-seven plants in China, but not its income taxes. FoxConn pays its income taxes in Taiwan, not China. LG pays its income taxes in Korea.
That is pretty much the truth. I recall that we were able to track the spread of the SARS-Cor-Vir-2 in China despite their denials to this day they were not being hit by it, by the drop in atmospheric pollution around their factories and cities. It was quite obvious as the amount of pollution went down drastically as their economy got shut down.
How many have you owned that prompts that response from you?
Apple was the last Consumer Electronics and/or computer company to move manufacturing or assembly of its products to China, finally making the jump in 1999/2000 under immense economic and competitive pressure. It was also the first to voluntarily return some computer manufacturing and assembly to the US in 2013 with the assembly of custom iMacs in Elk Grove, California, and the complete ground up manufacturing of the new Mac Pro in Austin, Texas.
Because you are lying to yourself. China teaches skills in school, we teach Social Justice, in fact they send their Stem students here where they actually learn instead of partying.
I hate that China is a totalitarian government as much as you do in fact that would include about every other government besides ours, up until now anyway.
We can put our heads in the sand if we like but if you think the Chinese or any other country for that matter does not have intelligent creators in their midst we are being foolish. Mostly they are restricted by politics/corruption like we often are here.
I remember how we though we were pulling one off on Japan by selling them all our scrap which they turned into ships and planes and returned to us.
How many times have I told you and shown you that Apple HAS Americans making Apple products and that every single Apple product has American products in it, yet you persist in promulgating your myths. Why?
If it is false show us examples that enforce that opinion.
My wife knitted ours so there. {:-)
Even worse there is no need for companies to be owned and operated by Americans for Americans. The freedom of foreign investors to own property and corporations here is insane, most countries don't have that policy, we shouldn't either.
Communists said we would sell them the rope they would hang us with.
If that capability is being installed you can bet the NSA is involved either with it or allowing it, in order to compromise it for their own use.
sooo Tim American workers are basically not worth your investing some of that 750 billion in cash ya’ll sit on?
Bet you take all the “tax deals” and utilize the open markets we run with fidelity and integrity so you don’t have to shop your stock on the Shang-Hai Exchanges for you to raise your capital.
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