21–30 of 106 posts
Apple has deep pockets and very healthy margins that they could afford to fix this whole issue while keeping it in the media's radar and then at the right time turn it back to its competitors to prove their ethics. The competitors whose margins are already spread too thin will have great difficulty in coming clean in this issue. Apple gets a positive PR while others struggle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got it from https://twitter.com/#!/nicepaul/status/163797296306331648/ph... which gives a data source and is linked from http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-star...
Careful with your data sources and assertions. Some of this "data" needs a serious dose of fact checking. The data for: https://twitter.com/#!/nicepaul/status/163797296306331648/ph... as indicated at the bottom, comes from: http://onforb.es/wj2Lt6 which maps to: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/01/29/the-apple... If you look at Tim Worstall's (kinda op-ed) article on the second page, you can see that the…
As we are constantly reminded here, Apple takes 80% of the phone industry profits and thus deserve proportionate blame for working conditions. They make $575 in profit from an iPhone but pay the Foxconn workers $7 to assemble it. They could double the pay and still make a very huge profit. On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software…
That $575 number is nonsensical; the iPhone 4S (the most expensive model) costs $599 off-contract. These phones do not cost $25 to make. The real number is somewhere around $300, most of which paid by the carrier: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/26/iphone-sine-qua-non/ . Regardless, doubling the pay for workers does not solve the real issue here. Their wages are already above average for Chinese factory workers in that…
Well, then maybe Slashdot is wrong too:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-ear...
>"While Apple generates more than $575 in profit for every iOS device, and according to estimates in 2007 Apple earned more than $800 on every iPhone sold through ATT, Horace Dediu reports that Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, earning only $1.70 per year, per Android device — explaining how Apple is sucking up two thirds of the profit in the mobile phone business.
Because we live in a world where success is discouraged, and mediocrity is celebrated.
As we are constantly reminded here, Apple takes 80% of the phone industry profits and thus deserve proportionate blame for working conditions. They make $575 in profit from an iPhone but pay the Foxconn workers $7 to assemble it. They could double the pay and still make a very huge profit. On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software…
Should Microsoft be excluded from criticism if they make their buttloads of money from game sales and not the console itself? Should Samsung be excluded from criticism because they discount their prices? Even though they make more phones than Apple? If Apple decided to lower their prices to compete more aggressively with Android, would that absolve Apple of majority responsibility in your eyes?
Apple is the biggest company in the world, other companies are not. With great power comes great responsibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>$575 profit per iPhone? I think you mixed up profit with something else, maybe average sale price. The number is from the usual suspect Asymco. http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/02/android-economics/ >Whereas Android generates $1.70/device/year and thus an Android device with a two year life generates about $3.5 to Google over its life, Apple obtained $576.3 for each iOS device it sold in 2011[4]. The economics of Andro…
That's revenue (gross income) not profit (net income). Look at the charts on that article, they say all "revenue", the article is about revenue. Apple has an ASP on iphones on the order of 650 and a profit margin on the order of 40%. They can't be making 575 profit per phone.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-ear...
Apple is the biggest company in the world, other companies are not. With great power comes great responsibility.
So do you think that Samsung for example, has less responsibility for its worker's conditions than Apple?
Look, I'm not particularly into this debate. I believe the conditions are relatively horrible, but there are lots of horrible things going on in the world, so it's not where I'd spend my time. At the end of the day, working at Foxconn is voluntary, as opposed to, say, cancer.
That said, I'm glad that there are people in the world fighting this fight. It's how social change happens. And I'm going to assume that these people, who have decided this is their fight, have done their due diligence and decided that the best way to go forward is by attacking what is the biggest company and one of the most famous brands in the world.
So do I think Samsung is less responsible? No. But this isn't about being "fair" about the blame for corporations; it's about changing the conditions at Foxconn and in turn, China and the world. Targeting Apple has proven to be the best vehicle for that. So be it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That $575 number is nonsensical; the iPhone 4S (the most expensive model) costs $599 off-contract. These phones do not cost $25 to make. The real number is somewhere around $300, most of which paid by the carrier: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/26/iphone-sine-qua-non/ . Regardless, doubling the pay for workers does not solve the real issue here. Their wages are already above average for Chinese factory workers in that…
>That $575 number is nonsensical; Well, then maybe Slashdot is wrong too: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-ear... >"While Apple generates more than $575 in profit for every iOS device, and according to estimates in 2007 Apple earned more than $800 on every iPhone sold through ATT, Horace Dediu reports that Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 201…
It would be out of the ordinary for them not to be.