iPhone maker Wistron quits, saying Apple didn't let it make a profit

Haha yep, I've heard similar stories in Vietnam as well. Idk why but Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean management culture is absolutely atrocious compared to Japanese+SK management culture. All of them share equally shitty work cultures, but at least the Japanese+SK ones actually tried to train people from scratch. I really don't know why Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean companies don't do that as well.

> always felt like matter of time before audit/tax or political shenanigans drive foreign electronics assemblers out and eventually consolidate under India champions

Ehn, India's a federal system so financial+political shenanigans are highly dependent on the state's political and business culture.

It's the same in PRC ofc, with the administration in Guangdong/Zhejiang/Fujian being much more competent than the administration in Yunnan, Hunan, or Hubei.

That said, knowing about these intricacies requires cultural domain experience, which can only be acquired by training+hiring locally, or working with local players.

> I remember numbers last year that 2500/12000 registered forreign companies closed Indian operations since mid 10s, so maybe it's time for India chaebols to take over

I'd be curious about the breakdown by nationality.

After the Doklam standoff in 2017, Indian Federal Regulators began cracking down on Chinese FDI severely (which before 2018 was one of the largest FDI inflows India received), which lead those firms to divest their operations to Indian, Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese corporations.

For example, Xiaomi India's operation was originally run from Mainland China itself, but they were forced to sell their India operation to a Taiwanese-Indian consortium, so the only Chinese thing left of Xiaomi India is just the name.

This is what globalism does. Take the environmental destruction and shitty working conditions that would never be allowed in your own country to other countries and centralize the profits from doing so into the hands of a few.

If they succeeded (many didn't, ending in bankruptcy), the supplier was now trapped: no one could offer Walmart levels of volume, which the supplier now had to operate at to make a profit. Walmart could come back next year and demand lower prices. They famously joked amongst themselves that their goal was to drive out all profit for their suppliers.

Vlassic Pickles is the classic example of a company that took the offer, rebuilt themselves, and became massively larger than they were before.

I worked at a manufacturer for several years in IT. Walmart was a customer, but only in a limited way (i.e., without requiring huge volumes and service levels[0]). Our main competitor, Rubbermaid, was a tier 1 supplier. When Rubbermaid's main factory in the segment burned down, Rubbermaid withdrew from Walmart as a supplier, citing low profit margins. We got the call to come to Bentonville, where they offered us the chance to replace Rubbermaid, which would mean a fundamental restructuring of our entire operation to service them. We (wisely) declined.

[0] An example of the service level required: Walmart would send an order by EDI that would include a two hour window for delivery, 24 hours out, for a store. That meant you had to have inventory and drivers within a certain distance from every Walmart location so that you could immediately pick the order, get it on a truck, and arrive at the store within that two hour window.