I recall Tim Cook speaking about it actually. He says, Apple is there not because it's cheap but because they actually have unmatched engineering capacity. He w

I recall Tim Cook speaking about it actually. He says, Apple is there not because it's cheap but because they actually have unmatched engineering capacity. He was talking about how much quicker everything can get moving and how much accessible engineering talent they have. It makes sense, after all there are much poorer countries in the world but you can't expect for Afghanistan for example be like "okay okay Apple, we will do the chips and the phone at %25 discount". In fact, you can't expect even EU or USA to start easily doing that because the manufacturing know how is long gone with the de-industrialisation of the west. Sure, there's some talent and capacity left but its not anywhere near the scale of what exists in Taiwan and China.