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Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have anythin

by mokash 7y ago

Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have anything to sell, anywhere! I’m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they’re quickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
imjasonmiller 7y ago
I thought Apple was in the process of moving some of its production to India?
- rudiv 7y ago
  That's only for products being sold in India, to avoid import taxes. And of course, it's only products from more than a couple generations ago, e.g. the iPhone SE, the 6S. I think the newest phone they're planning to manufacture in India is the 8.
  - wingspar 7y ago
    As of Dec 2018, they were reported to begin building ‘high end’ phones in India this year. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-exclusive-idUSKCN1OQ0M6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-exclusive-idU... Granted, it’s small production numbers, but have to start somewhere.
jjeaff 7y ago
It's mind boggling to me that Apple has become so big, and a huge majority of their revenue is still coming from outsourced products.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Why? Until Trump was elected, which none of the elite class in the US thought was remotely possible, a massive trade war with China was on nobody’s radar.
Teever 7y ago
Can I ask you why you have this particular hope? Is it because you are a user of apple products and hope that you will continue to do so in the future because you are dependent on them? Is it because you believe that apple is a good company and you hope for the best for them? Why should we hope for the best for a company that has made hundreds of billions off of offshoring jobs to an authoritarian country with little regard for investing in manufacturing in America? The way I see it is that if China decides to squeeze Apple by restricting their production it will be a fair comeuppance for a company that has seen fit to extract billions in wealth from developers through their app store and has sought to turn their commodity hardware into status symbols to extract even more wealth from middle class people who want to feel like they're more than middle class. If the executives at Apple had any foresight and any interest beyond self interest they would have encouraged domestic production a decade or more ago. Instead we have a situation where people are crying for poor Apple, a company who that has more money than god and who could have used that to create their own supply chain domestically which would have had tremendous benefits for America and the American people. Instead they have chose to consort and ultimately enable an authoritarian country into a situation where they now pose a legitimate threat both militarily and culturally to America, the albeit flawed but last best hope for freedom in the world. Think different indeed.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  It's pointless expecting corporations do make those sort of sacrifices, it would be economic suicide.
  - vharuck 7y ago
    If a company chooses to heavily invest in a nation with limited freedoms, the suicide started when the decision was made. Not when the consequences start to hurt.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      Yep, the idea that companies should be given a free pass to act with utter amorality because they put themselves in a situation where they are obliged to do so is ridiculous.
raverbashing 7y ago
This is a bit of a lesson of what happens when your focus on the price tag only. Sure, I want my products to be cheap, but there might be some hidden costs that will eventually show up at a very inconvenient time. Sure, Apple can do CKD assembly of their products everywhere, the manufacture of custom parts is the tricky part.
chrischen 7y ago
Chinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a political game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have serious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some policies (that don’t affect you) don’t agree with your world view. Even though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign power prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the justification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war, Vietnam, and mass incarceration. Yes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of sorting out their own political issues. And if not, they’ll reap the consequences without you having to do it form them. If you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics from afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing their own politics. I understand they don't have directly elections or a multi-party system, but that does not mean there is not opinion sharing in policy decisions, or intra-party elections. In a representative form of government direct-elections are not really a thing anyways. If you truly support democracy, the last thing you would do is to try to influence the policies of another people. That would be robbing them of their self-determinacy, even if it is to prevent them from robbing themselves of it.
- dwoozle 7y ago
  LOL what a riot. Support Chinese people by letting them dictate what Americans do? Fuck that, we should have squashed this government like a cockroach 50 years ago. Now that we fucked that up and fed them an entire manufacturing sector we need to deal with the evil superpower we created.
  - dang 7y ago
    Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222450 are not cool here, regardless of how right you are or feel. I'm sure you can express your substantive points thoughtfully, so please take the spirit of the site to heart and do. We'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ekianjo 7y ago
That goes both ways. If Apple don't make iPhones in China then chinese workers in these factories have nothing to work on, because nothing sells like Apple products. Apple is just being weak.
- psv1 7y ago
  Strongly authoritarian regimes can (and already do) easily give up a lot of the well being and livelihood of their citizens. It's not even remotely close to a symmetric dependency, market forces simply don't apply the same way to China as they apply to Apple or to the US in general. Which is another reason why getting into an already pointless trade war is such a bad idea.
summerlight 7y ago
Yeah, this is true. Apple is now desperately trying to reduce the dependency on China, but this will take at least several years which is more than enough to damage its reputation. Building supply chain that spans over an entire country is still a non-trivial problem even though Samsung did most of the hard works for Apple. And worse, even this is still a very optimistic projection given that it might be impossible at all. Samsung was lucky in that they were still producing majority of their semiconductors in South Korea, of course, which makes them still important enough to China. I don't know if Apple holds any thing comparable as a negotiation card.
Uhuhreally 7y ago
can't believe Apple can't do its own manufacturing in USA or Europe

by mokash 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

imjasonmiller 7y ago

I thought Apple was in the process of moving some of its production to India?

rudiv 7y ago
That's only for products being sold in India, to avoid import taxes. And of course, it's only products from more than a couple generations ago, e.g. the iPhone SE, the 6S. I think the newest phone they're planning to manufacture in India is the 8.
- wingspar 7y ago
  As of Dec 2018, they were reported to begin building ‘high end’ phones in India this year. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-exclusive-idUSKCN1OQ0M6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-exclusive-idU... Granted, it’s small production numbers, but have to start somewhere.

jjeaff 7y ago

It's mind boggling to me that Apple has become so big, and a huge majority of their revenue is still coming from outsourced products.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Why? Until Trump was elected, which none of the elite class in the US thought was remotely possible, a massive trade war with China was on nobody’s radar.

Teever 7y ago

Can I ask you why you have this particular hope? Is it because you are a user of apple products and hope that you will continue to do so in the future because you are dependent on them? Is it because you believe that apple is a good company and you hope for the best for them? Why should we hope for the best for a company that has made hundreds of billions off of offshoring jobs to an authoritarian country with little regard for investing in manufacturing in America? The way I see it is that if China decides to squeeze Apple by restricting their production it will be a fair comeuppance for a company that has seen fit to extract billions in wealth from developers through their app store and has sought to turn their commodity hardware into status symbols to extract even more wealth from middle class people who want to feel like they're more than middle class. If the executives at Apple had any foresight and any interest beyond self interest they would have encouraged domestic production a decade or more ago. Instead we have a situation where people are crying for poor Apple, a company who that has more money than god and who could have used that to create their own supply chain domestically which would have had tremendous benefits for America and the American people. Instead they have chose to consort and ultimately enable an authoritarian country into a situation where they now pose a legitimate threat both militarily and culturally to America, the albeit flawed but last best hope for freedom in the world. Think different indeed.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
It's pointless expecting corporations do make those sort of sacrifices, it would be economic suicide.
- vharuck 7y ago
  If a company chooses to heavily invest in a nation with limited freedoms, the suicide started when the decision was made. Not when the consequences start to hurt.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Yep, the idea that companies should be given a free pass to act with utter amorality because they put themselves in a situation where they are obliged to do so is ridiculous.

raverbashing 7y ago

This is a bit of a lesson of what happens when your focus on the price tag only. Sure, I want my products to be cheap, but there might be some hidden costs that will eventually show up at a very inconvenient time. Sure, Apple can do CKD assembly of their products everywhere, the manufacture of custom parts is the tricky part.

chrischen 7y ago

Chinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a political game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have serious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some policies (that don’t affect you) don’t agree with your world view. Even though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they’ve lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign power prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the justification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war, Vietnam, and mass incarceration. Yes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of sorting out their own political issues. And if not, they’ll reap the consequences without you having to do it form them. If you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics from afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing their own politics. I understand they don't have directly elections or a multi-party system, but that does not mean there is not opinion sharing in policy decisions, or intra-party elections. In a representative form of government direct-elections are not really a thing anyways. If you truly support democracy, the last thing you would do is to try to influence the policies of another people. That would be robbing them of their self-determinacy, even if it is to prevent them from robbing themselves of it.

dwoozle 7y ago
LOL what a riot. Support Chinese people by letting them dictate what Americans do? Fuck that, we should have squashed this government like a cockroach 50 years ago. Now that we fucked that up and fed them an entire manufacturing sector we need to deal with the evil superpower we created.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222450 are not cool here, regardless of how right you are or feel. I'm sure you can express your substantive points thoughtfully, so please take the spirit of the site to heart and do. We'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ekianjo 7y ago

That goes both ways. If Apple don't make iPhones in China then chinese workers in these factories have nothing to work on, because nothing sells like Apple products. Apple is just being weak.

psv1 7y ago
Strongly authoritarian regimes can (and already do) easily give up a lot of the well being and livelihood of their citizens. It's not even remotely close to a symmetric dependency, market forces simply don't apply the same way to China as they apply to Apple or to the US in general. Which is another reason why getting into an already pointless trade war is such a bad idea.

summerlight 7y ago

Yeah, this is true. Apple is now desperately trying to reduce the dependency on China, but this will take at least several years which is more than enough to damage its reputation. Building supply chain that spans over an entire country is still a non-trivial problem even though Samsung did most of the hard works for Apple. And worse, even this is still a very optimistic projection given that it might be impossible at all. Samsung was lucky in that they were still producing majority of their semiconductors in South Korea, of course, which makes them still important enough to China. I don't know if Apple holds any thing comparable as a negotiation card.

Uhuhreally 7y ago

can't believe Apple can't do its own manufacturing in USA or Europe