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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

#251

Post by jeswin »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #245
otikik wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good to see the totalitarian tyrant Xi wrecking China just as his inspiration Mao did back in the day This affects real people who just found themselves on this situation and have no power to change it. Gleefully calling the situation “good” is callous and insensitive.

> have no power to change it Who are these people? The one and a half billion Chinese are powerless to rise up? No government can subjugate a billion people. Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

> Their state is powerful but it only works because the citizenry are decently happy with their lives getting better over the last decades

China has had a billion for more than 40 years now; the only signficant challenge to the CCP's dictatorship was at Tiananmen in 1989. Communism has developed fairly sophisticated tools to help retain control; all the way up from textbooks in schools to violence as needed.

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

#252

Post by philwelch »

iglio wrote: post #103
mschuster91 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple industrial partners are all asians. Samsung and the like don't do any better regarding ethics. You can rightfully complain about labor practices in other Asian countries, but forced labor from concentration camps is a uniquely Chinese atrocity.

Just for completeness, the US has its own flavor of issues here in its prison system. Just 23¢ to $1.15 is the typical hourly pay [1], and work is not always voluntary and up to the same employee protection/safety standards as true employment [2]. Labour sourced from the incarcerated creates problematic incentives in law enforcement. [1] https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor_about.js... [2] https://www.…

If someone actually commits a serious felony—murder, rape, car theft, aggravated assault—I think they should be sentenced to forced labor.

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

#253

Post by cududa »

nixcraft wrote: post #35
simonbarker87 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been in and around manufacturing for the better part of a decade. I’ve run a small factory myself and have friends and family working at all levels of some of the largest factories in Europe. At the scale these things work out there’s no way to really “have a backup” not in the true sense that backup means. If you build a factory you use a factory - otherwise you’re wasting masses of money. What you should do is…

That is a thoughtful reply. Working in IT spoiled me, and I like having a backup or failover server or data centre but for Apple factory. But, it makes sense now, knowing the scale of this Apple iPhone factory, it is next to impossible to build the backup factory. Thanks!

Consider that each new iPhone and iPhone size required retooling entire portions of the manufacturing line. And by retooling I mean physical tools - the shoots that deliver the right sized screw to the individuals assembling that part, soldering techniques changing and requiring different equipment, spot weld equipment etc.

Building a “backup factory” would also require that massive investment every year to revamp the assembly line, and never get used.

Then there’s the thousands of components that go into an iPhone, and their deliver schedules perfected down to 30 minute windows - you’d have to recreate that, and just ship, what, nothing? To the backup factory?

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

#254

Post by philwelch »

wil421 wrote: post #221
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What aspect of China makes the West look like a 'backwater'? Compare China homicide rates to USA. Or China incarceration rate to USA incarceration rate.

China has less prisoners and the fastest wait times for organ transplants.

Also, China’s incarceration rates don’t count people who have been welded into their apartments under the zero-COVID policy.

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

#255

Post by spaceman_2020 »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #138
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India, being a democracy, means that governments have to give in to demands of voter groups. The two largest voter groups are farmers and low wage labor. This has ensured that acquiring land for large scale projects or changing labor laws carries massive political risk. Changes to India’s farm laws now seem next to impossible. I doubt India will have a more popular government than it has today. Yet, it had to cave in…

>India, being a democracy, means that governments have to give in to demands of voter groups Love how everyone is throwing around the word "democracy" in this thread like saying it makes hot true and that it has some specific meaning. The only reason Apple is moving there is because it is NOT a democracy. 'Electoral autocracy': The downgrading of India's democracy https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56393944

Propaganda. The government of my state is led by a party that came into existence less than a decade ago. Every election has literally hundreds of candidates from hundreds of parties competing. I can and have criticized the government on online and offline mediums

Sure, there is pushback from government supporters, but that doesn’t mean there is no democracy. As it is practiced, democracy is thriving in India.

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

#256

Post by boole1854 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #77
MarkusWandel wrote: post #74

What I would rather know is where the entire supply chain is. What countries contribute what percentage of the finished product? You can claim "made in X" if the final assembly is there, even if 90% of the value add is in the supply chain not located in X.

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…

> 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…

If the cost allocated to China is 90% at each 'hop along the chain', then the total going to China across all hops is 90%, not 0.9^n. (This isn't like probability theory -- adding more links in the chain doesn't decrease the costs of earlier links.)

In any case, I have not found more recent estimates, but in 2018 one author estimated that only 3.5% of the manufacturing cost could be allocated to China. Their competitive advantage is in final assembly, but most of the pricey components are sourced elsewhere: https://theconversation.com/we-estimate-china-only-makes-8-4...

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

#257

Post by deltree7 »

akmittal wrote: post #193
deltree7 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India has 5% manufacturing capabilities of China and will be at least 2x expensive and slow. India also has strong labor laws and local politicians still need votes

> 2x expensive That's not even close. Samsung,MI,Oppo and Vivo make almost all phones for India in India. If it was this expensive they will never make India

Yeah, compare Apple's margins vs all of the margins that you mentioned

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

#258

Post by adventured »

saiya-jin wrote: post #250
ksec wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China. May be for many westerners, but not Apple. They knew exactly what they are doing. >It turns out that in spite of all values that Apple promotes, it actually cares about nothing but the profit and its comfortable zone in China. Which is the worst part of it all. Their insane hypocrisy. Now that Apple is only mov…

> May be for many westerners, but not Apple. They knew exactly what they are doing. Yeah right, the idea that richest company ever didnt do a proper due dilligence and Tim personally didnt have whole + and - list with detailed financial and PR projections of each choice etc. is pretty naïve. I bet stuff thats happening was pretty high on cons list. Everybody who wants to knows how things actually look like in China o…

> Suicides, oppression, child labor. Yet they couldnt care less and the only reason to move away is disruption of supply. ... Ladies and gentlement there you have it, true morals of yet another big corporation, not worse but certainly not better.

Do you have a link to reports on Apple utilizing child labor, from which your conclusion is derived? How much of their labor in China is based on children?

From what I've read in the past, they became extremely vigilant in particular about eliminating child labor from their supply chains a long time ago.

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

#259

Post by questime »

Qtips87 wrote: post #79

If Apple want to exit China for geopolitical reason it should move to Vietnam. Western manufacturers have set up shops in India before and there were few successful stories and many have exit eventually. Ford for example exit India after not turning a profit for decades. When people point out India's problem it is the usual suspect like government red tapes, poor infrastructure, unreliable electric grid...etc. Some e…

I could argue European's have very low IQs relative to access to resources/wealth - it would be equally stupid and racist but I would have better evidence than you to back it up just by looking at how much they get outcompeted by their Indian origin fellow citizens.

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

#260

Post by SamReidHughes »

ksec wrote: post #186
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…

>Apple and many westerners never understand the risk and the ethics implication of doing business in China. May be for many westerners, but not Apple. They knew exactly what they are doing. >It turns out that in spite of all values that Apple promotes, it actually cares about nothing but the profit and its comfortable zone in China. Which is the worst part of it all. Their insane hypocrisy. Now that Apple is only mov…

Okay, be real for a second -- Apple doing manufacturing in China benefited the common Chinese factory worker by driving up wages.
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