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Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

wsj.com

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Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#121

Post by Karunamon »

amelius wrote: post #117
rolisz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people live on farms and grow animals, kill them and then eat them. I haven't killed one myself, but I have been at pig butchering "parties" at my grandparents or uncles and saw how the sausage is made. Still tastes yummy.

I bet if you ask city people to either kill an animal or grab a shrink-wrapped package containing a vegetarian meat substitute, by far the majority would choose the latter.

… For a meal or 2, and then they're just as likely to grab the knife after realizing how nasty those meat substitutes taste compared to the real thing.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#122

Post by yarky »

netheril96 wrote: post #116
yarky wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Born and raised in China. The OP made a good point that applies to all poor countries I've lived in: those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty, which they do to help their families/children/themselves. Maybe you were raised in a family that did not need to go through such hard labor, but that doesn't mean your right in your view of your own world ;) P.S. I was also born a…

The point that “those jobs are the only (even the best) way out for most people to get out of poverty" stands. But the point that China has strict labor laws is laughable. The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

> The laws are indeed strict but seldom enforced.

This is true of most strict rules elsewhere: they're there but seldom enforced. Take speed limits, they're strict, but good luck enforcing them. All we do is we monitor from time to time and give tickets. Yet we could enforce this to the manufacturers, right? Why can a car go beyond the speed limit if it's strictly prohibited?

We cannot compare working conditions as is, but they're easy to compare when you take time into account: how where our labor laws a couple of generations ago? Not that different than poor countries today.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#123

Post by throwawaaay129 »

rwalle wrote: post #107
throwawaaay129 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy I just feel really bad for these people. They pr…

Born and raised in China, I stopped reading this after the first paragraph. Laws are meaningless if they are never enforced or are simply ignored. Which happens all the time in China. It is not easy to fire people. Sure, in normal situations. But when appropriate, government is going to ignore all these and do whatever necessary, and maybe even threaten to put you or your family in jail. Want to go to court? Good luc…

If the government is out to get you, then yeah you're screwed.

If it's you against a company - then you typically have more protections than I think the typical western reader would expect.

I personally know people that had issues firing others at their company as well as people that got compensation when fired. Sure there are loopholes and people still get screwed a lot, but on the whole companies are generally apprehensive to fire employees and it's not totally the wild west

In the current situation, it very much sounds like it's people vs. Foxconn and that in the end people got their compensation.

You can argue that the situation was instigated by government policies, but that's sorta besides the point

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#124

Post by powerapple »

fyresala wrote: post #26

iPhone made in China is no better than the cotton from Xinjiang. Earlier the reports are workers in the China iPhone factory had a protest and brutal conflict with the local police. Reasons varied from unbearable working condition, the zero-covid policy, and being deceived about the compensation. After the local police oppressed the campaign, the government assigned headcounts to local villages, demanding them to fil…

Wrong. The protest is about compensation, the workers were promised to have 10k once they get pass the probation period, 3 months. They were let go before the 3 month probation finished, and they demand the payment. You don't just go around developing world and criticize people not eating organic food or anything. It is not right. I wish Chinese workers get paid the same amount as their western counterparts, the fact is that factories moved there because of they can pay less. Is it a bad thing? No, apparently we need dollars to import anything, so they are making less money in western standards, but at least they are making some money. Has fairtrade coffee made African countries as rich as Europe? it will never happen, forget about ethics, if you are taking away the financial base where people can make a living, you are taking away everything.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#125

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

shapefrog wrote: post #51
rdl wrote: post #27

I wish we could fix whatever prevents this from happening at scale in Mexico, too (with some high value production in the US and potentially Canada as well, and maybe some other supplies coming from the elsewhere in the Americas.). I wonder if it is infrastructure, regulation, labor, or what.

> labor You may think a Mexican (or a Canadian) is a cheap / poor worker - but that is simply because you can not comprehend small wage numbers.

Chinese GDP/capita is larger than Mexico's now, and wages probably reflect that.

China is no longer as attractive to manufacturers as a low-wage platform. Its advantages are now more about the local supply chain, good infrastructure and local expertise.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#126

Post by vanilla_nut »

black_13 wrote: post #48

You could move it to the US? Im just saying. To say appalachia?

I thought the same thing. The iPhone is already quite expensive. It shot up from an MSRP of around $500 to $1000+ in the last 5 years. Clearly the market is willing to pay a large sum for the iPhone, and monthly payment schemes/subscription programs take away 99% of the sticker price shock (for better or for worse).

Considering people will by an iPhone almost no matter the price... why not manufacture some in the US, with minimum wage jobs and no worker exploitation, and charge $1500 a pop for 'made in the USA'?

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#127

Post by yarky »

usrnm wrote: post #70
ls15 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I will not be surprised Apple will cease the plan in India as soon as China steps back from the zero-covid policy, as if all the blood has not been spilled. I doubt it. The disadvantages of being dependant on a single source are well-understood in 2022.

They were understood just as well 50 years ago, the problem is, all these disadvantages are long term. Short term profits always win

Well understood? I doubt many organizations had a pandemic SOP/DRP before 2020.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#128

Post by powerapple »

rwalle wrote: post #107
throwawaaay129 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy I just feel really bad for these people. They pr…

Born and raised in China, I stopped reading this after the first paragraph. Laws are meaningless if they are never enforced or are simply ignored. Which happens all the time in China. It is not easy to fire people. Sure, in normal situations. But when appropriate, government is going to ignore all these and do whatever necessary, and maybe even threaten to put you or your family in jail. Want to go to court? Good luc…

I'd say you are not seeing the world as it is. In the past, a job is for life, no one gets fired, and their children will take their position in the same factory, you get housing and everything. Now, if you are in state-owned enterprise and companies, you have a job for life unless you don't want it any more. In private sector, especially small companies, you may get screwed over. No, government will not try to fire you, you are nobody to them. You can go to labour court for these things, and normally you will get compensated for illegal termination. I am also only speaking in general, not cases.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#129

Post by verdenti »

mikymoothrowa wrote: post #96
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple have the budget and the interest to investigate their supply chain and provide a good answer to this. Outside sources probably don't :/ My uninformed speculation would be that the answer is something like 90% China for each hop along the chain, but those accumulate. 0.9^n becomes small with large enough n, so depending on the viewpoint it might be majority non-China…

it’s no where close to 90% https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple to move 40-45% iPhone production to India

#130

Post by powerapple »

philliphaydon wrote: post #55
throwawaaay129 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where people get the idea people are semi-enslaved in factories.. Having lived in China, in my second hand experience Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. Somewhere between US and Europe. It's not really easy to fire people and people regularly sue their employers and win. The legal system is generally very heavily biased towards the little guy I just feel really bad for these people. They pr…

> Chinese worker protection laws are quite strict. The fact 996 is illegal and still practiced and complained about and censored… makes any existence of protection laws being strict null and void.

the labour law was mainly for factory workers, there overtime needs to be compensated. For office workers, it is not clearly defined, because typically you are evaluated by works done, not by time as factory workers.
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