>Do you need an educated labor force to assemble iPhone? Yes you do. "Low-skill" workers with basic education (reading, writing, counting, some understanding

>Do you need an educated labor force to assemble iPhone? Yes you do. "Low-skill" workers with basic education (reading, writing, counting, some understanding of some scientific concepts) will simply perform better. And you still need engineers and other high-skill workers to supervise, maintain, perform quality control, improve methods etc.. The thing is China (at least until quite recently) had a huge quantity of those and at a rather low price.