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Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#41

Post by pishpash »

eej71 wrote: post #32
mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…

If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.

If they are poorer than people in Vietnam they can just go to Vietnam to work. That's not that much different than going to southern China to work. It is almost a common market.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#42

Post by latchkey »

mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…

Quite a few of the factories are actually owned by Koreans... Vietnam is their cheap labor force.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#43

Post by shp0ngle »

coolspot wrote: post #3
nkingsy wrote: post #2

Doesn't seem far enough away or nuclear armed enough to be a very good backup plan.

The main criteria for Apple is how poor and abundant population is.

Vietnam is not that poor. Vietnam is MUCH richer than its direct neighbours, Laos and Cambodia. Thailand is richer though.

The actual thing is not really poor population, but how easy is to build new factory there.

Vietnam has the best thing for that - it is easy to build new stuff there, as the infrastructure exists; however, they absolutely ignore any environmental laws and just spew all waste into rivers and air.

Look up Formosa Steel incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Vietnam_marine_life_disas... - huge disaster of a Taiwanese company, after which there were big protests. Communist government then arrested all protesters and put them to 20 years in prisons (for protesting against a foreign company!). Nobody protests about environmental waste now.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#44

Post by cyberpunk »

gleenn wrote: post #27

How is no one mentioning that China is threatening Taiwan. If the US ends up in a war with China, suddenly most Apple products would have serious operations problems if not being shut off completely. Cheap labor isn't a bad reason, but this is also a hedge against the heating politics between the West and both Russia and China.

If the US goes to war with China, I can imagine Apples supply chain problems won’t be very high on our priority lists…

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#45

Post by pishpash »

azinman2 wrote: post #36
AYBABTME wrote: post #26

I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.

Because you slowly shift your economy out from underneath you and effectively give it away. In the process you lose the ability to have any of these core competencies yourself. In the end what’s the point of having cheaper products if no one has a job to buy them.

But they don't need jobs to buy them, they get dollars printed for them to buy them. If one day the dollar can't be printed without tanking itself, they will also have the jobs that allow them to buy the products.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#47

Post by licebmi__at__ »

AYBABTME wrote: post #26

I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.

Usually nobody has problems with offshoring unless it’s their job that’s being offshored.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#48

Post by chaosbutters314 »

AYBABTME wrote: post #26

I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.

2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources, etc

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#49

Post by yrgulation »

At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments. If a real war starts we can use the services industry, unless we outsource that too. We’ll send the lawyers and software engineers in, and power our cardboard tanks with wood and steam.

I was hoping the pandemic and the war in europe would teach us that electronics, particularly high end, should be relocated to allied countries at the very least.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#50

Post by wmf »

supernova87a wrote: post #24

I'm interested to know to what extent this is just assembly of parts imported from China, or whether the real control over things like the M1 chip assembly, secure element, logic board, etc. are also moved to Vietnam? Seems like that's the secret sauce / real proprietary stuff that tells you whether the high value is moving too. (or maybe that is not even in China either) And do they have the surrounding parts + engi…

Apple Silicon is made in Taiwan.
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