Apple and their overseas production operations have come under considerable heat in the last few years. However, a new article in the New York Times brings to light why Apple, more or less, is forced to manufacture their products in China and other countries.
The piece is nothing short of enlightening, but trying to summarize the seven-page opus would be a disservice to Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher’s reporting efforts.
However, the big take aways are:
- The only place Apple could manufacture products is China, and it isn’t just because of the cost. The Chinese governement subisidized the building of factory cities where companies and manufactures could hire legions of workers (3,000) and engineers (8,700) to live in dorms in a day. This same process would take nearly nine-months in the U.S.
- The most prescient example of this given in the article is Steve Job’s order to make the iPhone’s screen unscatchable. Jobs refused to sell a phone that people would carry in their pocket under the constant fear of having the screen scratch. So six weeks before the devices release he ordered his “lieutenants” into in office and told them to figure out to make the glass scratch proof, and have it ready in a month. This scale of manufacturing simply wouldn’t be possible in the U.S. under those time constraints.
After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.
New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit? — NYT
New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit? — NYT
- Academic and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of manufacturing Apple’s devices that paying American workers would add roughly $65 to each iPhone’s end cost.
- Apple’s A4 and A5 processors are manufactured by Samsung. In Texas. By Americans.
An enormous amount of information is packed in the article about the regulations, laws, and government postulating that caused the U.S. to lose out on Apple manufacturing, but the message is clear: labor costs equal a small part in the much larger logistical equation that is Apple’s iDevice supply chain.
Source: The New York Times [via 9to5Mac]
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