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The end of Apple’s affair with China

economist.com

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Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#81

Post by TillE »

dragonwriter wrote: post #46
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe. It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Ap…

> For those saying that can't happen, think Ukraine in 2012 or 2018. Russia? Invading? Can't happen? No one paying even a little bit of attention thought “can’t” since the invasion of Georgia in 2008. In 2012 they would have thought “has no reason to at the moment”, much as they would about Belarus today; what was unexpected in 2014 was the Maidan Revolution tossing out the Russia-aligned government, to which the inv…

> No one paying even a little bit of attention thought “can’t”

Maybe that's true in the abstract, but how did those in power act based on this obvious threat?

Europe completely refused to even begin to diversify its natural gas sources until this year, even though that obviously should have happened after the annexation of Crimea at the very latest. They invited catastrophe by relying on Russian energy.

In practice, they didn't take the threat seriously. They thought it wouldn't happen, they gambled quite a lot on that outcome.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#82

Post by alistairSH »

slaw wrote: post #76
alistairSH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium. Denmark. Sweden. Germany. All relatively competitive with US on an hourly basis.

Local grocery in Seattle is hiring, $26/hour. From what I read on hackernews is like entry software engineer job in Sweden.

€32.8* > $27.77

:shrug:

* Euro zone, EU is less

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d... https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#83

Post by bzax »

Bakary wrote: post #18
bzax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft : "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it" Has the rightful owner been deprived of their property? What, exactly, is the property in question?

I pirate quite a bit but what bothers me about this reasoning is that at the end of the day the goal is to not pay for other people's labor, and the reason it happens is primarily the ease of achieving this rather than the nature of the thing in question. Whether it's specifically called theft or not has significant legal implications, but is also a moot point in an ethical and aesthetic sense.

On the contrary, I am not making the claim that "it isn't theft because no such property has been deprived". I think whether it is theft is a nuanced question, and it can only be answered if we are clear on what we think that property is. The US constitution perhaps defines such a property - to paraphrase lightly - "securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings". If a simple exclusive right to one's work exists here it is clearly being deprived! (notably, such a simple right is not a thing, at least under US law - or fair use wouldn't exist)

What, to you, is the property being taken here? One can disagree ethically with the constitution's "The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", or one might disagree either legally or ethically with the consistency of Congress's implementation of that power, or one might disagree ethically with whether a particular violation of that right that one believes exists is a deprivation.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#84

Post by michpoch »

gambiting wrote: post #59
Bayart wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe You'd be well bellow the gross average everywhere in the EU, even the poorest countries. Outside of the EU you might have a shot in Albania or Moldova, but you'd lack all the infrastructure and stability you'd need for large scale manufacturing.

Average is a really bad way of measuring what people get paid though. The average pay in Poland is currently 6700PLN/month , and that's a crazy amount of money for that country. Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN, just to show you the disparity between the average and "real" pay of real people. A factory worker will make much closer to 2000PLN a month than 6700PLN.

Your data is a bit dated - the minimum wage in Poland is 3010 PLN and it'll be 3490 PLN starting 1st Jan 2023.

The unemployment rate is very low, so to be able to hire factory employees you'd realistically need to offer at least 5000 PLN (~1000 USD) in gross salary.

You'd have a much better chance to open such factory in Spain or Portugal, the salaries are similar, but you'll have an easier time hiring + green energy from sun.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#85

Post by smoldesu »

twawaaay wrote: post #48
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe. It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Ap…

That's like super naive. First, you mentioned it. "It has sure been profitable". That's kinda the whole point. You get more profits, you use those profits for R&D to further distance yourself from the competition. If there is any way to reduce your risk it is building a technological edge over competition and sizeable cash reserves. Second, even if Apple faced complete stoppage in production, its situation is differe…

> Fourth, if TSMC is unavailable they will spin the production somewhere else.

Where?

Intel would sell them their fabs, but they don't have a process as advanced as TSMC 5nm. Samsung might be able to compete, but their yields are wickedly low and still slightly behind TSMC. GlobalFoundries might accept Apple as a customer, but then we'd basically have two Qualcomms.

What is Apple's plan-b for Taiwan?

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#86

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

xadhominemx wrote: post #56
shubhamjain wrote: post #40

The cynical side of me senses that what would land with India and Vietnam is labor-intensive, commoditized assembly of parts. "X% of iPhones manufactured in India" is sort of misleading if the bulk of parts are still coming from China. In some ways, I think this is going China's way. They are moving up the ladder into specialized manufacturing and away from manual labor. A smart strategy considering the demographic d…

The bulk of the parts are not coming from China. Maybe some very commodity assembly and back end steps. But the vast majority of the manufacturing value add happens in Taiwan (semiconductors) and Korea (display).

I imagined the storage and RAM also come from Korea.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if the battery comes from China.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#87

Post by gambiting »

Darge wrote: post #80
gambiting wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average is a really bad way of measuring what people get paid though. The average pay in Poland is currently 6700PLN/month , and that's a crazy amount of money for that country. Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN, just to show you the disparity between the average and "real" pay of real people. A factory worker will make much closer to 2000PLN a month than 6700PLN.

> Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN Can you please provide some sources for that claim? For example [1] says that the lowest, starting salary is already over 3000. And the salaries for teachers grow with work experience. [1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/10/12/polish-teachers-among...

>>Can you please provide some sources for that claim?

Family who are teachers - but I guess the bottom of the scale has increased now, that's my mistake.

Also observe how the top of the scale is 64578PLN/year, and according to the article, teachers reach that level in about 20 years on average. So even after working in the profession for 20 years, you don't reach the average wage for your country when working as a teacher.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#88

Post by [deleted] »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #53
rapsey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok name the countries.

It might be an exaggeration to say that the U.S. is a huge outlier. I suppose that's subjective. But it certainly looks like an outlier in this summary of average wages of OECD countries: https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/average-wages.htm Average wages in the U.S. are, in fact, the highest among all OECD countries--and much higher than all but a few very small countries (Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Iceland). I wonder,…

[deleted]

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#89

Post by michpoch »

rapsey wrote: post #73
nmarinov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't seem to be minimum wage workers in China[1] and India[2]. And are in fact much closer to median than minimum. Europe's minimum wages are much higher in comparison[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China [2] https://www.india-briefing.com/news/guide-minimum-wage-india... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

I don't understand your point. Google says Chinese manufacturing jobs pay $11k per year in 2020. This is a salary level of a south/east European factory worker.

That's the salary. Now, you have employers costs, which will be much higher in socialistic countries in EU.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#90

Post by shagie »

rapsey wrote: post #14
pcurve wrote: post #7

Very insightful. It corrected a lot of incorrect information I had on this issues. 1. Labor cost is an issue but at 530 per month as of 2020 Chinese mfr labor is still relatively cheap and only twice as expensive as India. 2. Sales in China peaked in 2015-6 in terms of percentage of revenue for Apple 3. Despite the move, analysts predict 80% of Apple products will still be made in China by 2025.

> 1. Labor cost is an issue but at 530 per month as of 2020 Chinese mfr labor is still relatively cheap and only twice as expensive as India. Only by US standards. You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe. The US is a huge outlier regarding salaries compared to practically anywhere else.

The issue isn't entirely "how much you pay someone" but also a significant bit of "the supply chain for all of the parts are entirely within the city."

That supply chain part was traditionally a strong draw for electronics manufacturing to be done in China as you can get parts from down the street rather than the next city or state or country over.

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