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How Much Would an iPhone Cost If Apple Were Forced to Make It in America?

9 points by cmurf 9y ago

udba 9y ago
I find this hard to believe. I recently worked at a firm that is making top-of-the-line cell phones in the United States. Even if you took the LRIP BOM cost, quadrupled the cost of parts and then doubled it all for good measure you still wouldn’t sniff $10000. This looks like a writer trying to justify the abuse of workers and the environment overseas in the name of cheap stuff.
- valuearb 9y ago
  All we know is it would cost too much. These are great jobs for Chinese (far safer and better paying than rural Chinese’s farm jobs), but terrible for Americans.
cmurf 9y ago
In the $30,000 to $100,000 range… and no this is not a typo. Better tooling, more tooling engineers, and that's what it takes to scale. In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.
ohiovr 9y ago
What market do they expect to sell these exclusive American made phones? And how do they compare to the already perfect Chinese made iPhones? They know the answer but it was a well written article.
masonic 9y ago
I wonder how much iPhone advertising is placed in Forbes media every year?
stevenicr 9y ago
Pretty sure I commented on a similar article years ago that came up with a figure around $75 per phone additional cost. No idea how they got that figure, and perhaps it's a number that is only achieved if it were all phones being made in the states, and so scale is important to it.. However, if it is indeed possible to make half, or X amount of iphones in the states at only a $100 premium added to the price, I imagine a great deal of them would sell no problem. First of all, I'd wager that most people are not paying $1,000 cash for a new phone, and if they were, making it $1100 instead to get one with a US emblem on it would be negligle... however aren't most people just getting a new phone for free with contract, or just "jumping" to a new phone and still paying the same $20 per month that they will likely be paying forever for each new phone they will be getting from their loan shark, I mean carrier.. so they will never see the price increase. That would make an average cell phone bill go from $95 per month to $96 or something right? I personally believe the only thing holding them back from making them in the states has been holding a lot of cash over seas and over the heads to negotiate tax breaks with the fed and and discount deals with states. No idea what's really happening, but it would seem prudent for companies to get more chips made in the states with the way things have been getting unstable with relations in other parts of the world. Apple seems to be in a better position for these things compared to HP / Dell, etc imho.
luizfzs 9y ago
Which country of America?

9 points by cmurf 9y ago

udba 9y ago

I find this hard to believe. I recently worked at a firm that is making top-of-the-line cell phones in the United States. Even if you took the LRIP BOM cost, quadrupled the cost of parts and then doubled it all for good measure you still wouldn’t sniff $10000. This looks like a writer trying to justify the abuse of workers and the environment overseas in the name of cheap stuff.

valuearb 9y ago
All we know is it would cost too much. These are great jobs for Chinese (far safer and better paying than rural Chinese’s farm jobs), but terrible for Americans.

cmurf 9y ago

In the $30,000 to $100,000 range… and no this is not a typo. Better tooling, more tooling engineers, and that's what it takes to scale. In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.

ohiovr 9y ago

What market do they expect to sell these exclusive American made phones? And how do they compare to the already perfect Chinese made iPhones? They know the answer but it was a well written article.

masonic 9y ago

I wonder how much iPhone advertising is placed in Forbes media every year?

stevenicr 9y ago

Pretty sure I commented on a similar article years ago that came up with a figure around $75 per phone additional cost. No idea how they got that figure, and perhaps it's a number that is only achieved if it were all phones being made in the states, and so scale is important to it.. However, if it is indeed possible to make half, or X amount of iphones in the states at only a $100 premium added to the price, I imagine a great deal of them would sell no problem. First of all, I'd wager that most people are not paying $1,000 cash for a new phone, and if they were, making it $1100 instead to get one with a US emblem on it would be negligle... however aren't most people just getting a new phone for free with contract, or just "jumping" to a new phone and still paying the same $20 per month that they will likely be paying forever for each new phone they will be getting from their loan shark, I mean carrier.. so they will never see the price increase. That would make an average cell phone bill go from $95 per month to $96 or something right? I personally believe the only thing holding them back from making them in the states has been holding a lot of cash over seas and over the heads to negotiate tax breaks with the fed and and discount deals with states. No idea what's really happening, but it would seem prudent for companies to get more chips made in the states with the way things have been getting unstable with relations in other parts of the world. Apple seems to be in a better position for these things compared to HP / Dell, etc imho.

luizfzs 9y ago

Which country of America?