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Samsung ends mobile phone production in China
- danso 7y agoReading this site on iPad and chrome activates an ad/dialog that sends me to luckyguys-dot-top, which locks my iPad in a never-ending series of “Congrats lucky iPad user!” dialog boxes.
- nafizh 7y agoSame for Safari on iPhone.
- dang 7y agoOk, we switched to Reuters from https://www.anandtech.com/show/14930/samsung-stops-production-of-phones-in-china https://www.anandtech.com/show/14930/samsung-stops-productio....
- wil421 7y agoDang, this is the second time today an Anandtech article has been causing ad issues. I commented earlier about it happening to me but on a different article.
- latchkey 7y agoSamsung already makes most of their phones in Vietnam. Not a huge difference, other than the lack of tariffs. https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/12/why-samsung-of-south-korea-is-the-biggest-firm-in-vietnam https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/12/why-samsung-of-sou...
- hardwaresofton 7y agoI wonder why more producers haven't made this move? If Vietnam is there as far as infrastructure goes and they have the skilled/unskilled labor why is this not a more popular move. Also when we say "make" I assume we mean "assembles". Somewhat anecdotally I recently purchased a laptop and tried to find one that wasn't made in China and it was nigh on impossible.
- avocado4 7y agoIt takes time to move supply chains.
- hardwaresofton 7y agoRight but Samsung didn't start yesterday either -- I'm surprised news of Samsung starting to move their production (whenever that started) didn't spur other companies to move.
- fauigerzigerk 7y agoAnd crucially, it takes more time than imposing new tariffs.
- latchkey 7y agoI'm a tech expat living in Vietnam (from Bay Area) for the last 4 years. This is a really loaded question. You have to look into the politics of the VN govt, especially related to the fact that it is on the northern end of VN, closer to Hanoi... which has different politics than in the south. I've been to Hai Phong, which is the city in the north near the China border where most of this commerce happens. It is fascinating to see how big the houses are there. If you drive along the road to the airport it is literally filled with old men riding their nice shiny new bicycles and exercising by the side of the road. The tariffs definitely have people looking into Vietnam a lot more. I've driven (motorbike) the dirt backroads near the Chinese border where there is nothing but trees and mountains. There are literally trucks brining goods into and out of Vietnam (illegally) on hastily constructed dirt roads. You can see it in google maps even. I've seen how people have strung cables over rivers between China and Vietnam to ferry goods back and forth. So yea... it is happening, it just isn't hitting the news much. It is also happening in Cambodia and Laos. Look into the roads China is building and how Sihanouk is a literal Chinese eco disaster. Fascinating times...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AFascistWorld 7y agoChina can do without Samsung phones, the market is a political stake against Samsung and Korea, but their OLED and RAM are needed there, at least for now.
- philliphaydon 7y agoIt doesn’t matter if China doesn’t need the phones. The phones were made there for other markets...
- sjg007 7y agoApple should too
- blackflame7000 7y agoApple just recently announced their making macbooks in texas, perhaps its a start. Even mexico could be a good place because prosperity there helps the US as well.
- kennywinker 7y agoNot macbooks, mac pros - a much smaller market by unit size, with a much greater markup, so much easier to move to the US than most of their other products.
- baddox 7y agoAnd they were already manufacturing the previous generation of Mac Pro there since its introduction at the end of 2013. Presumably they will continue to use Flextronics for their American manufacturing of the new Mac Pro. Also, as far as I can tell, this American manufacturing and assembly relies on automation to an extreme extent.
- guramarx11 7y agoNot even President Trump can make Apple do that
- sjg007 7y agoApple should do it because it’s morally right.
- umanwizard 7y agoWhy?
- benjaminbrodie2 7y agoExpect a reply with fifteen citations lol
- kennywinker 7y agoshort answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps "As of 2018, it is estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui (Muslims) and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as Kazakhstanis, who are kept in these secretive internment camps throughout the region."
- post_below 7y agoI'll try it without citations :) Because China is an authoritarian regime that imprisons, and sometimes kills, people for their opinions. Because China systematically destroyed one of the oldest and most peaceful cultures the world has ever seen in Tibet. Because China put 100's of 1000's of Muslims in concentration camps. A program which is still happening by all (non Chinese government) accounts. And so on. Not that Apple makes decisions based on moral considerations.
- yesplorer 7y agoBeyond your last point on concentration camp, the US isn't a shining example of "imprisons, and sometimes kills," and "systematically destroyed peaceful cultures" either. And the bail system where poor people can be held for not having money to post bail is akin to decentralized concentration camps around the country. That you can say is a stretch, but you get the point.
- anonygler 7y agoIn addition to tariffs, they were effectively training their competitors in China. Manufacturing in China just accelerates the rate of IP theft.
- steve19 7y agoSamsung claimed a Chinese company stole their folding phone screen tech. https://www.slashgear.com/samsung-galaxy-foldable-screen-tech-stolen-china-accused-30556532/ https://www.slashgear.com/samsung-galaxy-foldable-screen-tec...
- Razengan 7y agoAfter decades of stealing from Apple and other companies, Samsung complaining about this is sheer irony.
- benjaminbrodie2 7y agoIt's not if the target of complain is a Chinese company. A mistake people often make in moral reasoning is to assume that it's only qualitative, descriptive aspects of an action (ie excluding such things as who did it, whom was it done to, etc) that is relevant to how they should be assessed morally
- linuxdude314 7y agoWas this supposed to make any sense? It might be the first non bigoted remark you've made on this post, but can't tell because it is completely incomprehensible.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tooltalk 7y agoHow do you feel about Apple's theft of Xerox's innovation in the late 70's or Obama's "pardoning" of Apple IP theft (ie, Samsung's USITC victory), that would have banned iPhone imports from China in 2012?
- thrwweasdfa243 7y agoNote - Vietnam has an FTA with India (unlike China), and so this also helps it fight back against Chinese smartphone players that are currently dominating in India AND it also works as a bargaining chip with the Indian govt. for tax incentives. IIRC they moved their television assembly back to Vietnam in retaliation for some failed deal last year. Might be a good idea too, the Indian state is a moronic rent-seeking state whose sole purpose it'd often appear is to run a leaky incompetent "welfare state" simply in order to support of its political masters.
- sbmthakur 7y agoIndia will have a "welfare state" as long as we have a large poor population and all people are not on the same pedestal.
- bnt 7y agoThey have 1 billion people, they are a market who can do whatever they like, in their own right.
- oblio 7y agoDebatable. Money is just as important and right now India's GDP is comparable to UK's GDP. And the UK only has about 65 million people.
- pdm55 7y agoIf you are interested, here are some background articles about Apple's assembly plant in Zhengzhou, China https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2188162/foxconn-tale-slashed-salaries-disappearing-benefits-and-mass https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2188162/f... https://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-iphone-factory-foxconn-china-photos-tour-2018-5?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-iphone-factory-foxc... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/technology/apple-iphone-china-foxconn.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/technology/apple-iphone-c... Why my interest? I taught Maths (in English) in Zhengzhou for a couple of years and constantly wondered where my students could find employment, so I recently searched online and found these articles about the iPhone assembly plant there. Some things I learnt: assembling iPhones is boringly repetitive, basically just install the same one screw all day, so workers only last about a year; the impetus came from Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire founder of Foxconn; and, in the past, to be purchased by the Chinese, such "foreign goods" had to be shipped to Hong Kong, then turned around and imported back into China, whereas Foxconn negotiated virtual export/import at the touch of a button. The iPhone story, by putting my former Zhengzhou students in the "centre" of the US, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong tensions, made those tensions more "engaging" for me. And yes, I am concerned about the plight of the Uighurs. I think the repression of that group is directly linked to the 2014 knife killings at Kunming railway station, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack. Immediately after that attack, metal detecters were set up at railway stations in Zhengzhou. And I noticed some Muslim businesses disappearing from the streets.
- dang 7y agoThis was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143687.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoSamsung has lost the Chinese market. It's all Apple, Huawei, and the other Chinese brands. This what this piece of news highlights, really.
- Chico11Kidlet 7y agoMore and more companies are leaving China because manufacturing there has become way too expensive. China is focusing on the ultra-high-tech sector in their manufacturing growth strategy now. They are also generally turning away from manufacturing and towards a service economy. 10 years ago, I was working for a European electronics manufacturer producing in China. The Chinese production facility was already outsourcing low-level manufacturing steps to Eastern Europe because even 10 years ago China was already becoming too expensive and Eastern Europe was a better choice for unskilled labour. Interestingly, most countries trying to move away from China have massive issues finding better manufacturing locations even though China is becoming ever more expensive. Nothing compares to China in terms of infrastructure, know-how and quality. My current company tried setting up a plant in Vietnam but gave up after 3 years of trials because it just doesn't measure up to overall cost-effectiveness and ease of operations in China even though Vietnam is often celebrated as "the new China" nowadays. Different countries have different specialties they can excel in (e.g. certain SEA nations that are great at textile manufacturing) but despite their government's efforts to make their countries more attractive, they just can't compete. China will be able to up those prices ever further for quite some time and others will only slowly move away from them. They are confident it will last until 2040 (when they want to be the number 1 ultra high tech research and manufacturing country).
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoMaybe this is a stupid/naive question but why doesn’t Samsung make their phones in Korea?
- bnt 7y agoExpensive
- Simulacra 7y agoProbably labor cost. An anecdote: There’s a really good book called China Inc. that has a story about a belt manufacture in America. The American executive tours a belt manufacture in China one day. He sees that all of the leather hides that have blemishes are being used whereas he would have to discard them. The Chinese factory had so many workers that were paid so little, they could afford to pay someone to cut out small, even tiny patches of leather, and glue them into the blemishes of the belts. It hit the guy so hard that he decided then and there to close his factory in America and move it to China.
- coldtea 7y agoWhy doesn't Apple make their phones in the USA?
- Simulacra 7y agoLabor costs, unions, and ..well..it's just not profitable for them. Apple is in business to make money, by any means necessary. Helping the American economy and labor force is not a priority.
- gnopgnip 7y agoThe total cost is lower in Vietnam, partly due to environmental concerns, labor cost, taxes, permitting.
- Simulacra 7y agoProbably labor cost. An anecdote: There’s a really good book called China Inc. that has a story about a belt manufacture in America. The American executive tours a belt manufacture in China one day. He sees that all of the leather hides that have blemishes are being used whereas he would have to discard them. The Chinese factory had so many workers that were paid so little, they could afford to pay someone to cut out small, even tiny patches of leather, and glue them into the blemishes of the belts. It hit the guy so hard that he decided then and there to close his factory in America and move it to China.
- shaneprrlt 7y ago"Rising labor costs", what happens in the future when the world is fully developed and these co's run out of developing countries with cheap labor to exploit?
- mxuribe 7y agoUnfortunately, there will always be someone to exploit. Capitalists have a clever way of "evolving" to always be able to capitalize on someone/some group.
- toasterlovin 7y agoAt least capitalists can feed people.
- mxuribe 7y agoOh, they can...but the market forces that they follow tend not to incentivize the feeding of people unless there is some gain in it for them. /s Seriously though, I acknowledge and thank you for your opinion, but respectfully disagree.
- shaneprrlt 7y agoI believe you mean to say some "grain" in it for them. /badpun
- mxuribe 7y agoAwesome! :-)
- toasterlovin 7y agoDisagree all you want, but I can walk into any grocery store in America and get a day’s worth of we’ll balanced nutrition for under $3.
- kevingadd 7y ago
- GrowthTrapper 7y agoWe need to distant cellar business from China, expect their Government to spy and others to steal.
- GeekyBear 7y agoDidn't China encourage consumer boycotts of South Korean products after South Korea agreed to put an anti-ballistic missile system into place on their soil? Samsung very quickly went from a popular product with consumers to an also ran. It seems odd to ignore this as a factor in Samsung's decision making.
- HeavenFox 7y agoOverall, the rise of domestically-made Android phones are probably the biggest reason of their demise. But if we have to point at one specific instance, arguably it’s the Note 7 debacle. Samsung completely mishandled the situation - they refused to recall the devices in China despite doing so in other countries, and when some customers posted pictures of their burned phone, Samsung threatened them. And of course consumers voted with their wallet, and nowadays it’s rare to see Samsung phones in China.