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The cynical side of me senses that what would land with India and Vietnam is labor-intensive, commoditized assembly of parts. "X% of iPhones manufactured in Ind
by shubhamjain 4y ago
The cynical side of me senses that what would land with India and Vietnam is labor-intensive, commoditized assembly of parts. "X% of iPhones manufactured in India" is sort of misleading if the bulk of parts are still coming from China. In some ways, I think this is going China's way. They are moving up the ladder into specialized manufacturing and away from manual labor. A smart strategy considering the demographic decline they are to face in upcoming decades.
On the other hand though, it would be foolish to expect the whole industry moving away from another country overnight. It would be a slow process that would start from the labor intensive parts of manufacturing. I think, it'd be a win-win for everyone, including China.
- bmer 4y agoYeah, this makes sense to me. I have not read the linked article, but I wonder, does it discuss this? I caught another comment lower down that says the article mentions that labour costs in India are "only 2x" less than the labour cost in China. As if "only 2x" is "trivial"...
- throwawaymaths 4y agoThere is momentum due to large capital costs associated with building the facility and getting the hardware to perform the manufacturing over there in the first place, etc. When labor costs are low, capex can be a bigger piece of the pie and a larger contributor to the effect
- quesera 4y ago2x a small number is sometimes also a small number. I speculate that labor is not a significant contributor the cost to produce an iPhone.
- MagnumOpus 4y agoMore precisely, assembly labour is not a significant contributor. There's labour in other parts of the chain that make up a big chunk of the cost - hardware design, software design, firmware, chip design, fabbinig, component manufacture, shipping, retail, warranty repair and whatnot, but those don't happen in China or India, so they won't change if the assembly location changes.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoIts not going fast enough. And to develop a creative class with smart products, they would have to liberalize which they cant. Cant discuss about crypto, if the stasi on the barstool next to you reports you for detention. Subversive and disruptive industries, need a state that turns a blind eye on them , or else they will not thrive.
- xadhominemx 4y agoThe bulk of the parts are not coming from China. Maybe some very commodity assembly and back end steps. But the vast majority of the manufacturing value add happens in Taiwan (semiconductors) and Korea (display).
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI imagined the storage and RAM also come from Korea. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the battery comes from China.
- zapdrive 4y agoLast time I checked, storage and RAM are semiconductors.
- xadhominemx 4y agoMemory is of course manufactured in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and China (at Korean owned factories). But you get the overall point
- evgen 4y agoBattery and radios (wifi and LTE/5G) are produced in China from what I recall.
- xadhominemx 4y agoThe radios are not produced in China
- sudosysgen 4y agoiPhone displays are also made in China by BOE. They were also intending to use YMTC for NAND but didn't because of political pressure.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
- bergenty 4y agoYou need to start somewhere. I presume over time more of the components will be made closer to the factories where the phones are actually being manufactured.