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At some point, your manufacturing partners in China are going to realize they control the means of production and can capture the added value by developing thei
by notfromhere 7y ago
At some point, your manufacturing partners in China are going to realize they control the means of production and can capture the added value by developing their own front office to market and sell the goods they already manufacture.
At what point do places like Dell become just licensing operations?
- crispyambulance 7y ago> At what point do places like Dell become just licensing operations? I don’t know, but I expect that there’s a roomful of well-paid asshole MBA’s at Dell working on that “problem” right now. Everything outsourced and a few product mangers picking stuff out of a catalog— That’s ultimately what the supply chain leads to as corporations grow.
- Xixi 7y agoIIRC that's the story of Asus: they started out by making parts, and at some point (a decade ago?) started to sell their own desktop/laptop computers.
- cptskippy 7y agoI thought Dell has always been reliant on ODMs. Were they at any point manufacturing components themselves? Dell was still building PCs from off-the-shelf parts in the 90s so much of what they have was developed in the last 20 years. I've got to imagine they still have people in house who know how to setup manufacturing.
- notfromhere 7y agoEven most of the assembly is overseas now. Eventually Asian companies are going to just market their own brands instead of letting Dell be a supply chain manager and marketer.
- wysifnwyg 7y agoThat's happening already as manufacturing countries ignore copyrights from the source country.