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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

#61

Post by dontbenebby »

This isn't news -- Apple opened factories in a bunch of SE Asian countries IIRC, and now stands poised to play them off each other since the old model of showing up and being shocked there are human rights abuses in... not just Xinjiang.

Apple's real affair, along with the rest of the tech industry, is with countries like Ireland and Austria are "neutral" in the sense that they allowed untaxed gains to flow into them much like Switzerland did in WWII.

They need to adjust to a world where people may buy their devices every two, three, even five years and hold onto them -- especially since China has control of those rapidly depleting rare earth mineral deposits that you need for the overly thin batteries.

Or folks can switch to Android, who seemed to have gone full Pirates of Silicon Valley and stolen the good features from iOS, last I poked around someone's phone.

(Let's be real: at this point they're just doing tweaks, not coming up with major enhancements.)

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#63

Post by throwawaymaths »

bmer wrote: post #47
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…

Yeah, this makes sense to me. I have not read the linked article, but I wonder, does it discuss this? I caught another comment lower down that says the article mentions that labour costs in India are "only 2x" less than the labour cost in China. As if "only 2x" is "trivial"...

There is momentum due to large capital costs associated with building the facility and getting the hardware to perform the manufacturing over there in the first place, etc. When labor costs are low, capex can be a bigger piece of the pie and a larger contributor to the effect

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#65

Post by Apocryphon »

vxNsr wrote: post #28
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. Crimea was invaded in 2014. My point was that in 2012, it was 2 years before the invasion, and less foreseeable despite how quickly in the grand scheme of things it came afterwards.

Additionally Ukraine is the breadbasket of the world, people thought Russia wouldn’t do this because of how it would mess up the food supply chain… the exact same argument being made for why China can’t invade Taiwan, too many companies rely on it.

The Russian armed forces has had a lot of actual battlefield experience invading Georgia in the ‘00s, bombing Syria in the ‘10s, not to mention its internal bloody counterinsurgency occupation in Chechnya in the ‘90s. The Chinese military hasn’t fought a real war since against Vietnam in 1979, and its navy has had no experience at all since- Korea? The end of the civil war?

War is entirely more uncertain for China, and potentially more destabilizing with more to lose, than it was for Russia.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#66

Post by quesera »

bmer wrote: post #47
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…

Yeah, this makes sense to me. I have not read the linked article, but I wonder, does it discuss this? I caught another comment lower down that says the article mentions that labour costs in India are "only 2x" less than the labour cost in China. As if "only 2x" is "trivial"...

2x a small number is sometimes also a small number.

I speculate that labor is not a significant contributor the cost to produce an iPhone.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#67

Post by nrclark »

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…

A few years of TSMC being unavailable would cripple consumer electronics in general. Lots of chip vendors all buy their dies from TSMC. It's not just Apple by a long shot.

This is a known problem, potentially one even at the scale of being a national security issue. It's a big part of why there are all these new federal subsidies to try and bring advanced chip-fab back to the US.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#68

Post by trevyn »

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.

At the end of the day, the goal is to enjoy a data sequence that exists in the world.

If someone thinks that they can “own” a data sequence on the internet, and labored to produce it based on that belief, that’s unfortunate.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#69

Post by stickfigure »

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.

> 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.

The interesting question the article didn't answer is "how much labor goes into making an iphone?" The economics are very different if labor is 10% of the cost vs 70% of the cost.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#70

Post by gambiting »

dontbenebby wrote: post #61

This isn't news -- Apple opened factories in a bunch of SE Asian countries IIRC, and now stands poised to play them off each other since the old model of showing up and being shocked there are human rights abuses in... not just Xinjiang. Apple's real affair, along with the rest of the tech industry, is with countries like Ireland and Austria are "neutral" in the sense that they allowed untaxed gains to flow into them…

>>who seemed to have gone full Pirates of Silicon Valley and stolen the good features from iOS

.......I'm sorry, what? It seems like iOS is "stealing" features from Android every few years, they basically let Samsung and others implement something first, improve it for a couple iterations, then finally they add it to iOS and say "look this is a massive step for iOS!", and I'm sitting there being like......we've had this for at least 5 years, what's the big deal? Just that it's nice and polished? Cool, well done, have a cookie.

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