14 ms·

How a $2k 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured

376 points by jaredwiener 2y ago

amatecha 2y ago
On iOS, if you go into Settings -> General -> Legal & Regulatory , and scroll all the way down to the very bottom, you will see: "Made in China" :)
- sharkjacobs 2y ago
  This article isn't about the iPhone
  - amatecha 2y ago
    hahah, I noticed that this morning! too late now :'D
budmichstelk 2y ago
[dead]
markus_zhang 2y ago
Interesting. It is impressive that they almost managed to do 100% made in the USA, judging by the "Table of Origin". However the table doesn't really cover all the details down to the components, so I'm wondering where he sourced every small details. He did include one paragraph on the website: "Individual components used in fabrication are sourced direct from chip makers and parts distributors."
- nickff 2y ago
  For reference, the table is on this page: https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/?ref=404media.co https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/?ref=404media.co Todd Weaver is vastly exaggerating how special, innovative, and skilled Librem is. Their components are largely sourced from overseas, through domestic distributors, which is the norm for electronics manufacturers; overseas distributors are often precluded from international sales by agreements with their suppliers. There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think. Source: I am an embedded developer, who works on a research, design, and development team which includes electronics engineers, and works on products manufactured in the same facility.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think. Second this. The Liberty Phone PCBA isn't even that exotic as far as modern designs go. The NXP SoC (CPU) it uses is a common part with a rather pedestrian ball pitch. A board like this is within the reach of countless trained EEs here, but they're usually happily employed at companies with higher volumes and margins. This often translates to a perception that they don't exist in the US market when low-budget companies go looking.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    I thought the phrasing of "western distributor" was shady. I'm like doesn't that just mean the person ordering and distrusting the parts is "in the west" (not even necessarily US) but the parts could be from anywhere? It's not saying much at all.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >"Individual components used in fabrication are sourced direct from chip makers and parts distributors." I suspect most of those are from overseas. A lot of that stuff just isn't made in the US. I don't know why they are shady about it, they should just be honest and denote which stuff isn't available at all in the US and which stuff isn't available at reasonable costs in the US.
- fecal_henge 2y ago
  Are there any other ways to source components?
paulorlando 2y ago
The important quote: "If the tariff from China is 100%, and you know it is going to be 100 % for the next 10 years, you will make a different business decision than if it is, ‘Might be 100%, not sure what's going to be in three months, what's it going to be in a year from now, and what's it going to be in three years from now.’ That uncertainty does not create stable markets. It does not create very accurate business decisions."
- GaggiX 2y ago
  We don't know what will happen in three days at this point.
- timewizard 2y ago
  > That uncertainty does not create stable markets. Stable markets with bad outcomes are not worth defending on stability alone. > It does not create very accurate business decisions The business environment is not great. It does seem some part of that is the result of cheap Chinese goods that have displaced labor _and_ environmental costs flooding foreign markets. That China even uses proxy countries to push out even more is instructive. So, if not tariffs, then what should we use to solve this?
  - gmm1990 2y ago
    Maybe start with smaller tariffs and go from there. But its not even worth defending current administration policies. Its either completely stupid or deliberately malevolent.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      On what basis are you making this recommendation? Your personal experience negotiating nation-state level agreements between two hegemons?
      - BDPW 2y ago
        There is a deluge of experts in economics and other fields who clearly state this is not the right approach to bringing manufacturing to the US. Why wouldn't we trust experts in their fields?
knowitnone 2y ago
[flagged]
- bangaladore 2y ago
  Things to break down here... When manufacturing products like this, nobody is using a soldering iron, and certainly not in volume. Its all pick and place + reflow + wave soldering (river of solder). However, when absolutely needed, say phone/laptop repair, you absolutely are "skilled" labor if you can work on these devices.
- rapnie 2y ago
  What makes it skilled is the amount of soldering points you have to make in an hour, and the grit you need to maintain that rate because you have no choice. The same kind of skills that orange pickers in the US south require, and is more abundant in Mexico apparently, than in the US.
- MrLeap 2y ago
  What do we have to do to be skilled to you? Build a ship in a bottle while juggling flaming bowling pins?
lazyeye 2y ago
Taiwan used to be just fishing villages, the idea that it could become a powerhouse chip manufacturer was just pure fantasy.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  So was Shenzhen.
  - s1mon 2y ago
    If you're ever in Shenzhen, I recommend going to the Shenzhen Museum. It's pretty amazing to see how quickly it grew (~40 years), and the level of stuff that they were making early on vs now. Another big take away for me was that they highlighted who had been the chief customs officer over time. Controlling the flow of goods in and out is matter of pride for Shenzhen and China.
- throw39934 2y ago
  It took several decades of consistent development. It is not possible to do that, in US with 4 year election cycle. Next gov will just roll back all reforms, and redirects all money...
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Case in point: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/trump-joint-address-to-congress/trump-tells-congress-to-end-chips-act-00212871 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/trump-joint... But ultimately, this is why America should look towards congress for enacting lasting change.
    - guax 2y ago
      exactly is not like a president can override congress powers and be able to dismantle agencies or set tariffs for example. everyone will trust the stability of the policies then.
ge96 2y ago
Oh man Purism, well I think Librem but yeah
jvanveen 2y ago
I can't believe people still buy the Purism scam after all these years...I ordered a Librem 5 and a Pinephone back in the days of the other supply chain story(Covid). The Pinephone flew in from China in less than 2 months; the Librem 5 took more than 4 years to arrive. All Purism offered during that time were "opportunities" to invest and exhausting delay stories about failing supply chains, while keeping their customers completely in the dark about their order state. Instead of preying on the goodwill of FOSS enthousiasts, they now try to tap into a new market (nationalism) to sell the same useless overpriced brick to.
- bo1024 2y ago
  Purism laptops were great when I was a customer. Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about. I wanted to support the company further, and I think they are doing sincere, good, important work, especially on the software side. But these communication and customer relationship issues didn't get better and I switched away.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about. Which issues? The phones were shipped, albeit with a long delay. Now, you can buy and get them quickly. Sent from my Librem 5 daily driver.
    - bigyabai 2y ago
      The issue is pretty obvious to most normal people. My ex bought a Purism phone and laptop, said he would switch to Linux the moment they arrived at his doorstep. He ended up buying a new Macbook and iPhone before any of his Purism hardware started shipping. He might still be using the Apple hardware too. I love FOSS as much as the next guy but you're being outright facetious if you can't see Purism's problem.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        Purism did have a lot of problems with delayed shipping. Today it's just not true though.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Was just thinking about this the other day. Why were the librem and the pinephone never updated? I'd like to get a new one, but am sure not going to buy something 10+ years old at this point. (Would be happy if a new one was comparable to my old iPhone 6s.) I know there's not a lot of money in them. But if you want sales at all you better update your hardware more often than never.
- curtis3389 2y ago
  Pine64 updated the PinePhone with the PinePhone Pro.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Guess I thought of that one as more like a "fix," since the first one was not fit for purpose. Still not good enough, needs spec bump and driver support.
    - beeflet 2y ago
      I was looking at potential linux phones the other day, postmarketOS has ports for phones as new as fairphone 4 and OnePlus 6. They don't have any phones with decent camera support though. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Hmm, I saw the fairphone 5 on another page and the hardware support is not substantially worse. Install page says you need fairphone.com to give you permission to unlock. :-/
        beeflet 2y ago
        yeah most android phones do, it has to do with the modem I think
    - 2y ago
codelord 2y ago
"manufacturing expertise exists primarily in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries" lol. What's this skill that Cambodians have that Americans can't learn or can't be automated by robots? Can they juggle 4 wrenches in the air simultaneously?
- tntxtnt 2y ago
  The skills to live on $1-$2/hour apparently.
- saintfire 2y ago
  Expertise exists primarily where things primarily happen. If no companies manufacture complicated products in a particular country that doesn't mean the country is too dumb to make it, it means they don't have a large pool of experts in that field. If you read the article, the founder of purism even says as much. "After we were successful on the Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign, we took our own electronics engineers (EEs), and then we worked with Chinese design and manufacturing through 2018, 2019, and 2020, because that's where every phone is made." So the only phone that qualifies for "Made in the USA" tag learned (at least in part) how to make it from Chinese engineer(ing firm)s.
  - codelord 2y ago
    So basically you can find qualified workers everywhere. There's a valid question about the cost. But to say the problem is lacking "skilled workers" is laughable as most of these skills are machine dependent and can only be learned on the job after the factory is built.
    - alwa 2y ago
      Are there skills involved with building such factories and production lines? Where do those people get their experience?
      - codelord 2y ago
        American and multi-national companies often build such factories in low-income countries. It's not that no one in the US knows how to build factories. It's purely a cost/regulation question.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
"On those two products we take the printed circuit board, which is just a blank board that has no components" Don't count on that. On Schneier's blog years ago, we brainstormed attacks on hardware in subversion discussions. One idea was putting a hidden chip in the board itself. Another was modifying the board's material to emanate secrets for RF attacks by a nearby attacker. There's a reason high-security at NSA required TEMPEST shielding. I wonder who prints the circuit boards. On the chip side, substituting one of them with the same covers would be an easy attack. One team showed a tiny change at analog level could have subversive effects with low odds of being spotted. I wonder how they verify they received the correct chips. Just from a domestic, manufacturing angle, the story sounds great. I'm grateful the company made sacrifices to make smartphones in America. I hope their example leads to innovation that drives the prices further down. "we are doing the entire manufacturing process of all of the electronics, meaning resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits" I disagree with this take unless the integrated circuits are designed and fabbed in America and by Purism. They're critical, high-value parts of the product that used to be piles of individual components before ASIC's. If not made here, I'd say upfront it's manufactured in USA "except for (percentage or function of) integrated circuits in it."
1970-01-01 2y ago
$2000 is a punchline to a joke? No?? OK then, we're back at the 1990s cost level, when cell phones were as big as a brick with 50% of it being a battery. https://www.ooma.com/wp-content/uploads/cell-phone-cost-comparison-ooma-edited.jpg https://www.ooma.com/wp-content/uploads/cell-phone-cost-comp...
- beeflet 2y ago
  It's more like 2017 era technology done at a very small scale with massive markup (I think they mention it costs them like $650 to produce). They don't have the scale needed to access the latest chips.
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    Quadcore ARM Cortex-A53 is 2014 era technology.
  - sct202 2y ago
    It's kind of amazing the markup and also their listed BOM costs when if a no-name Chinese company made a phone with this level of specs and put it on Amazon it would be like $100.
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      I wonder why won't they do this then. There's still no comparable GNU/Linux phone on the market to this day, so this would be a huge opportunity if true. The only exception may be PinePhone Pro, but it isn't much cheaper than Librem 5 and its software maturity is still lacking.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Low volume, mostly sold to govt types.
tcherasaro 2y ago
As one of the “skilled electronics engineers” in the US you could count on US soil (whatever that means) I can tell you this article reads very strangely to a EE. “we were able to take all those designs and spin up our own SMT, it's called Surface Mount Technology” “run that through our surface mount technology by our line operators” “meaning the printed circuit board or PCBA assembly” So, he’s definitely not an EE. No EE talks like this when they are trying to explain the nuts and bolts to a lay person. Either that or the editor took liberties they shouldn’t have.
- skort 2y ago
  The audio of the interview is on the page. The "Surface Mount Technology" bit is at 7 minutes in.
- brookst 2y ago
  What, you’ve never dip switched the manufacturing process despite investor resistors?
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    Quick, fetch the firewall extinguisher! The AmeriPad is having an unplanned thermal excursion!
- tdeck 2y ago
  You're just jealous. These guys have spun up their own RoHS and are doing a 100% EDA automation with full Verilog over there. By doing the reflow process (it's a way of building integrated circuits) they're able to offer complete impedance right here in the USA.
  - dragontamer 2y ago
    Thanks. I hate it. Have my upvote.
  - turtledragonfly 2y ago
    Go back to /r/vxjunkies/, and take your retro-encabulator with you :Þ
intrasight 2y ago
"You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on US soil, and there's probably a million in Shenzhen alone." Anyone else failing to semantically parse that sentence?
- sndean 2y ago
  Same here. I was trying to insert “on one hand” or similar before the comma, but that’s too small.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    Maybe he just means they're literally countable. Like, accurate to a single digit?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I suspect the quotation was due to that inside their own head — that they were actually going to say "on one hand" but stopped themselves because it wasn't correct.
- Lucasoato 2y ago
  It may mean that the set of the skilled electronics engineers on US soil is countable, so it is finite or there could be a one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers.
- TheDong 2y ago
  My read for that was "a human could, reasonably, count one-by-one the number of engineers if they were all arrayed in front of them", while a human can't reasonable count "one, two, three" and get to a million. I would say that a number humans can reasonably count to is about ~15,000, maybe 25k, assuming you're limited to about 15 hours of counting. Any number over about 100k is simply a number humans are incapable of counting up to from one.
- ragazzina 2y ago
  Maybe they forgot the word "more"? It makes sense to me: "You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on US soil, and [whatever that number may be] there's probably a million MORE in Shenzhen alone."
AustinDev 2y ago
Was this written by GPT2? It makes zero sense to me. I've designed and shipped chips on u.s. soil.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  It's a transcript of a conversation after the first two paragraphs.
mberning 2y ago
Many of these articles make a great case for why these industries should have been protected domestically years ago.
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
mustyoshi 2y ago
That was an incredibly long interview for them to just say the COGS is only 100$ higher, but we feel the margin should be 1200.
- c6400sc 2y ago
  There's margin (on BOM cost), and then there's profit margin (above the design cost). Design costs are probably an order of magnitude higher in USA than in China, and can't be spread over hundreds of thousands of units. I'd bet the profit isn't that great.
arduinomancer 2y ago
I don’t understand I get that you can assemble a phone PCB with SMT parts yourself, that’s not that crazy But is there actually an American made SoC that can be used for a phone?
- happosai 2y ago
  They use i.mx8 by NXP. But that is not a mobile phone SoC. NXP has Fabs in USA where these can be made. On purism the actual mobile phone part is on a separate modem board. The Modem is Made in China, using Qualcomm chip made in Taiwan. I presume QC could make some of their SOCs in TSMC American plants if someone makes a big enough order.
maxglute 2y ago
>We always were sort of maintaining two different bills of materials of Chinese componentry and Western componentry because they're different. Then we produced five different iterations of the Librem 5 phone through Chinese contract manufacturing. And we iterated through those five changes over the course of about 18 months. At that point, we finally had a production ready product. And then we were able to take everything that we did and bring it to US soil. How many iterations can they get done in US in 18 months? That's what's going to kill Made in USA, if you can't get the design done on time, not a few $100 extra in PRC vs west sourced BOM, but millions more spent on development over longer time frame because lack of talent. Is the short/medium term solution still to send "homework" to Chinese prototype teams? I suppose economics of PRC speed and few prototypes > 100%+ tariffs.
- dmix 2y ago
  Kind of a pointless debate point (and economic plan) as it will always come down to humans and market conditions. Where the humans are who specialize and have deep experience in that stuff chose to work. You cant really fake that stuff via subsidization over long periods without also having all the other pieces of the market in place (all the way from low level workers to capital markets to regulatory environments and even attractive living costs)... otherwise Canada and EU would have grown a larger tech industry by now via their gov programs. There has to be strong organic production and only then can gov help tip the scales upward, instead of generating it from thin air at the top level. If no one is fleeing China to do it in the US the same way people fled American market conditions to build stuff in Asia it won't happen. Creating a forced siloed market through tariffs is probably the least efficient and most expensive method to achieving it. But it can plausibly if the domestic market gets used to not buying the nice things the rest of the world has for a decade (similar to what western gov is choosing to do with banning Chinese EVs but applied a thousandfold).
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    > Kind of a pointless debate point (and economic plan) as it will always come down to humans and market conditions. Exactly, even the Fairphone is assembled in China.
xlinux 2y ago
America need more manufacturing and less service industry.
givemeethekeys 2y ago
How much would it cost to create the equivalent of a first generation iPhone 8 with more storage space in America? That phone had everything necessary for communication, navigation, and even some basic photography and entertainment. Imagine a whole industry of distraction free dumb phones being built, by economic necessity right here in America, that then result in lower rates of addiction and better mental health.
- agildehaus 2y ago
  It's not like you can't doomscroll TikTok on an iPhone 8. I don't think getting slightly lower FPS on 3D games would lower addiction rates.
- Jean-Papoulos 2y ago
  How is the iPhone 8 anything close to a "dumb phone" ?
  - croisillon 2y ago
    my bank doesn’t support iphone 7 anymore so i guess it’s getting closer to a dumbphone, and not doomscrolling my bank account is definitely a plus for my health
    - imhoguy 2y ago
      And it is only matter of iOS version level which apps cut of at. Apple could "fix" that by providing yet another iOS upgrade for these older devices.
ein0p 2y ago
There are plenty of EEs in the good ol' US of A, they're just working as software engineers at the moment out of necessity, since there aren't really any EE jobs here, outside the defense sector and a few large companies. But that is beside the point since it's not "EE" that's being done in China. It's manufacturing and assembly of US designs. And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. The actual work is mostly done by robots, but before it _is_ done by robots, manufacturing capacity needs to be designed and built. Under the best circumstances (e.g. unlimited Apple resources in India) this takes years.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. Rather: cheap (US) labor that can do that. :-)
  - ein0p 2y ago
    I don't even think it's the cost. The actual formerly labor-intensive work is mostly done by robots now (save for e.g. the garment industry which is still only very partially automated). It's just that anything in the physical world takes time and effort. As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. I was first exposed to this when I worked for a "mostly hardware" company that also designs chips. They were going to introduce some features into the chips that I needed on the software side, and when asked about the timeline they said "3-4 years". Not a typo. That's how it is in hardware. I have no reason to believe that the timelines are substantially shorter in large scale high tech manufacturing - it's just the nature of the thing. You fuck something up, you can't just patch it, you have to re-do it, and that takes time and $$$. Be all of that as it may, we still _have_ to revitalize the "real" segment of our industry, no matter the cost.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. That's also partly because (physical world) engineers don't invest the same intense effort to enable quick iteration cycles for their area as software engineers do. I cannot say whether this is a "culture problem" of engineering disciplines, or managers don't see a huge economic value that this would enable, and thus don't allow engineers to work on such topics. I at least somewhat know what I am talking about, since when I had to get used to some CAD program, I really felt set back by decades in comparison what are standard practices in software development. A little bit like the difference between programming in a modern programming language and programming in Excel. Thus, in some sense I am impressed by (e.g. mechanical) engineers who despite all this actually are capable to accomplish creating a product (and I do believe that if the practices improved, they could do so much more).
thawawaycold 2y ago
"[...] chip sets that are like ST Micro [a Swiss company with American factories]" I guess that if Ford moved their HQ in DRC, it would be called a Congolese company with American factories, too?
- herbst 2y ago
  I googled St Micro. It's a france company with no factories in the US since 2010 as far as I can tell.
  - thawawaycold 2y ago
    Lol, i hadn't even checked the status (or existence, even) of ST's US factories. I've just known the company for a good amount of years having worked with their products for several projects and thus already knew that the biggest portion of their factories and offices is spread across France and Italy (whence their venture originally started from), so to present it as a Swiss company just underlined a very poor knowledge of the topic IMHO
zombiwoof 2y ago
Made in the USA makes no business sense for everything Then again our POTUS is a self proclaimed genius
DeathArrow 2y ago
>We sell a Chinese made Librem 5 phone for $799. We sell the Liberty phone for $2,000. When you're looking at just those numbers alone, that looks like a giant leap in cost. But there's a couple of factors that are not publicly known when you're looking at just those prices. When you're looking at COGS, cost of goods sold, our Librem 5 phone is equivalent in cost to about an iPhone. It's about $500 and some odd dollars, $550. So we can see that the Librem 5 phone doesn't have a very high margin when we sell it. The Liberty phone, same COGS componentry wise, but to produce it on US soil, we're adding not quite a hundred dollars. So it's about $650 to produce that entire phone. So the phone that costs them $550 is sold for about $800, while the phone that costs them $650 is sold for $2000. I wonder why is such a big difference in the margins.
- altacc 2y ago
  These are interesting numbers and they're oddly buried towards the bottom of the article. A ~20% mark up for mostly sourcing and manufacturing in the US is less than I'd expected, especially given the 250% price difference. He does say something about why that is: > It's the fact that it's a secure supply chain, that you know, staff that's completely auditing every component, which means we're selling to a government security market with all those additional layers that we've added on top. So a mix of marketing and supply chain security. Businesses charge the price people will tolerate paying.
DeathArrow 2y ago
>We can't have some nefarious chip put into the supply chain from a hostile country. On the other hand, China can think the same. Why rely on Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia? Or why rely on any US based tech, including software and services?
darthrupert 2y ago
A year ago I would've been ready and willing to pay double price for a fully US-made phone. Purism's liberty phone seemed interesting. Now, I will not buy american products at any price. It feels totally ridiculous now to even talk about moving the supply chain to the US.
- fsflover 2y ago
  China is still no better and this phone runs FLOSS. It's still the best offer for the hackers and activists.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > A year ago I would've been ready and willing to pay double price for a fully US-made phone. Why? What justified double the price a year ago? Especially since you sound like you're not an USer... Ok maybe avoiding China would have been a good idea 1 year ago too. But from that to overpaying for something just because it's made in the most expensive country in the world...
  - darthrupert 2y ago
    Good question, I honestly don't know anymore. Some manifestation of soft power that vanished into the air?
HenryBemis 2y ago
> ‘Let's take an existing made-in-China product and then just produce the same thing in the US.’ This is what got me. I remember 40-50 years ago everything (or most) "made in the USA". And how "Chinese product" was an insult while "American product" was a badge of honour. Oh how the turnstable.. When I was studying in the UK the _most_ diligent students were the Chinese ones. First to come, last to leave, spent hours and hours on workshops, but they were not interested in staying in the UK to live/work there. As if they were on a mission. Go-Learn-Return-SpreadKnowledge. Many other nationalities were tempted by the mighty-GBP and stayed. But not the Chinese. Vast majority of them learned as much as they could and then went back home. That was mid-90s. And those 20yo students of the mid-90s are 50yo with great studies and 30 years of experience, and there were thousands of them studying all over the UK, USA, and other countries. So there you have it.. I keep thinking of "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio" [0]. The game is almost over, time for the next cycle.. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
ralferoo 2y ago
I'm surprised that they admitted that their cost to produce the phone in China is $550 and they sell it for $799, while the cost to produce the phone in the US is $650 and they sell it for $2000. That's a 45% markup on one and 207% markup on the other. Taking just those figures in mind, they shouldn't be at all worried about tariffs - anything more than an 18% tariff, it's cheaper for them to build in the US than China for US customers. Honestly, that's much lower than I expected, especially considering they're even more restrictive in their component sourcing than most companies would need to be because they're catering to a security-focused group. I guess the real issue is that they don't have any more production capacity in the US, rather than it just being a cost issue.
- dwighttk 2y ago
  They don’t just arbitrarily set prices… demand comes into it.
- MarcellusDrum 2y ago
  Is this the price in just components? I skimmed through the article and that wasn't clear. Because if it doesn't include labor costs, then its reasonable that the US phone sells for a lot more.
  - hkmaxpro 2y ago
    Your question prompted me to look up “cost of goods sold”. From https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cogs.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cogs.asp > Cost of goods sold (COGS) refers to the direct costs of producing the goods sold by a company. This amount includes the cost of the materials and labor directly used to create the good. It excludes indirect expenses, such as distribution costs and sales force costs. So the $550 or $650 COGS includes the cost of labor for manufacturing, but excludes (say) marketing and auditing costs.
    - balderdash 2y ago
      And would exclude all of the R&D, certification and testing, procurement, and in some cases depreciation from factories/equipment
WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
Cost is 650 and they sell it for 2k? lol By the time the US learns what "efficiency" means, China will be building on Mars
b8 2y ago
Purism also markups their mini PC by a lot. Bunch of scammers IMO. Source: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10510U_62546345460.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10...
- fsflover 2y ago
  You can't just say this without providing a source.
  - b8 2y ago
    Sure, https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10510U_62546345460.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10... is the minipc they use. Just buy it directly from China and install Coreboot.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      > Just buy it directly from China and install Coreboot. "Just" is doing a lot of work here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638323
      - b8 2y ago
        There's YouTube tutorials and folks that will help out. It's the price you pay when you save money.
        fsflover 2y ago
        So many people prefer to pay to avoid these troubles, which is fine. It's just not for you.
ferguess_k 2y ago
I wonder how much it costs to do the following -- let's backtrack. We already know that US companies can design phones, like Apple. OK so the next step is to figure out where to source the components -- and under the context of OP's article, that means which components can be sourced directly from the US, or from the EU (i.e. manufactured inside EU, not branded in EU but sourced elsewhere). Once we can figure out which components are economically feasible to be manufactured in the US and EU with the tariff, we might be able to go from there and slowly expand the operation to the rest of the chain.
malvim 2y ago
Something that caught my attention is how they started with Chinese design and engineering because that was where the knowledge was. They they learned and appropriated that knowledge to the point where this was not needed anymore. I love this approach, as it’s not purely commercial, it’s focused on knowledge, and it’s not “stealing” tech, they probably have that on their contracts and the like. Also, it’s EXACTLY what China set out to do a few decades ago, and foreign industrialists and capitalists were so eager to spend less, they flocked over there, and the Chinese now have the knowledge as well as the labor force do to what they do. Some people love to cry about how China is “stealing” American tech, when in reality no one ever pointed a gun at a tech CEO’s head and said “you must move manufacturing to China.” They did it because it was profitable, and they knew the terms. I’m not saying industrial espionage doesn’t happen in China, it does, as it does anywhere else. I just don’t like the rhetoric of saying they’re “bad” for doing a perfectly legal business tactic.
bitbasher 2y ago
I had a Librem 15 and I will never buy another Purism product again. I wish it was good, but the product broke in less than two years. Worse yet, when it broke Purism couldn't help at all because they stopped making the 15s. That will be a hard pass for me...
- fsflover 2y ago
  I'm still using my Librem 15 and it works fine though.
  - bitbasher 2y ago
    Lucky! The first issue I had was the battery not being replaceable since they stopped making the 15's battery and couldn't offer any OEM/part info for a replacement. The second issue was more serious, the motherboard simply died and couldn't boot. At least I was able to recover the drive/ram which went into my new system76 laptop (that was 2.5 years ago).
    - fsflover 2y ago
      > Lucky! There are other lucky people on their forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-repo-for-microcode/27600 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-rep... and https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-repo-for-microcode/27600 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-rep.... There are unlucky ones too, but less it seems: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15-v4-laptop-not-turning-on-or-charging-need-advice/27541/10 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15-v4-laptop-not-turning-on-...
nelblu 2y ago
> It has 4 GB of memory, and reviewers say that its specs are pretty outdated. In my imaginary world, I wish someone stood up to this type of insanity. This would be a good time to force Apple / Google to revive old devices and allow the supply chains to adjust manufacturing things outside of China while the rest of the world pauses and lives with some outdated hardware technology. I know this is probably not feasible because Apple and Google probably survive on selling of new phones, but hey I can at least dream!
- fsflover 2y ago
  Related: https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/
- guywithahat 2y ago
  In this case, part of the criticism is that the phone doesn't function well. Even when it was new, it was slow and clunky, and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task. They may have optimized it a bit since, but fundamentally they chose an under-powered CPU to hit certain open source requirements. I agree though that for many things (such as their laptop), specs often don't matter. Either I need a high-end, GPU accelerated computer, or I need a terminal. Having the newest CPU doesn't matter if it achieves other desired goals.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task. This is definitely not true, the issue is in the non-optimized software. I tried SXMo [0] on a Pinephone (which is much slower than the Librem), and it was unbelievably fast, including watching videos and looking a maps in a split-screen mode, simultaneously and smoothly. Android had 10 years and a huge team of developers to optimize the UI. [0] https://sxmo.org/ https://sxmo.org/
    - nolist_policy 2y ago
      Sxmo is based on a keyboard-driven tiling window manager. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Touch gestures suck so much[1] that the most comfortable way to navigate it is with the volume buttons and power button. Each of these buttons has like 3 different functions with double, tripple click etc. Changing the volume is not one of the functions[2]. Auto screen orientation only works 50% of the time, because the whole thing is based on a pile of shell scripts. There is no lock screen included. No, I'm not kidding. [1] https://sxmo.org/docs/gettingstarted/ https://sxmo.org/docs/gettingstarted/ [2] https://man.sr.ht/~anjan/sxmo-docs/USERGUIDE.md#strongglobal-ui-controlsstrong https://man.sr.ht/~anjan/sxmo-docs/USERGUIDE.md#strongglobal...
cbmask 2y ago
[dead]
csours 2y ago
ctrl+f "moat" Hmm. So why can they have a 3x markup? What is the moat? Who will overpay by $1,000? 1. People who are required to use a product with very specific certifications. 2. People who want to use a product with a desirable backstory. In the first instance the US military requires testing and certifications that are costly to achieve, creating a moat for military suppliers. In the second instance, some podcast listeners are willing to significantly overpay for generic supplements due to the backstory and their trust in that podcaster. I am curious what the market breakdown is for this device - how many do they sell for case 1? how many do they sell for case 2? Also, if they don't sell very many, then their manufacturing capital costs, design and supply chain overheads per phone will be very high.
pengaru 2y ago
> It's going from raw materials to finished goods at our facility. More lies from Mr. Weaver... I'm sorry but an imx5 SoC is not a raw material.
christkv 2y ago
A big company like Apple can literally just buy the expertise that is needed to move production anywhere that makes sense. Flex likewise can do the same. There will be some ramp up time but these companies operate as scale.
bfrog 2y ago
This is kind of like the PCB pricing story, they could be priced competitively but that's not how the market in the US for domestic PCB manufacturing has been setup. It's been setup to target things that must be made here, where pricing is usually dictated by that demand rather than a competitive market rate. If china were taken out of the picture (e.g. JLCPCB) ideally a competitor would attempt to take what was that market. Or not? Maybe the margins are low and this is why it hasn't happened here already.
Empathy3 2y ago
Companies will never pay an American worker what an American worker needs to survive or live. This is going nowhere because unlike China where street food is had for pennies, American street food is BK, McD's and Taco Bell for $$$. Cost of living? Americans want homes, they don't want to live with their families, they want cars not bikes. Manufacturing in America will take a century. IMO

376 points by jaredwiener 2y ago

On iOS, if you go into Settings -> General -> Legal & Regulatory , and scroll all the way down to the very bottom, you will see: "Made in China" :)

sharkjacobs 2y ago
This article isn't about the iPhone
- amatecha 2y ago
  hahah, I noticed that this morning! too late now :'D

budmichstelk 2y ago

[dead]

markus_zhang 2y ago

Interesting. It is impressive that they almost managed to do 100% made in the USA, judging by the "Table of Origin". However the table doesn't really cover all the details down to the components, so I'm wondering where he sourced every small details. He did include one paragraph on the website: "Individual components used in fabrication are sourced direct from chip makers and parts distributors."

nickff 2y ago
For reference, the table is on this page: https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/?ref=404media.co https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/?ref=404media.co Todd Weaver is vastly exaggerating how special, innovative, and skilled Librem is. Their components are largely sourced from overseas, through domestic distributors, which is the norm for electronics manufacturers; overseas distributors are often precluded from international sales by agreements with their suppliers. There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think. Source: I am an embedded developer, who works on a research, design, and development team which includes electronics engineers, and works on products manufactured in the same facility.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > There are also far more skilled electronics designers in the USA than he seems to think. Second this. The Liberty Phone PCBA isn't even that exotic as far as modern designs go. The NXP SoC (CPU) it uses is a common part with a rather pedestrian ball pitch. A board like this is within the reach of countless trained EEs here, but they're usually happily employed at companies with higher volumes and margins. This often translates to a perception that they don't exist in the US market when low-budget companies go looking.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  I thought the phrasing of "western distributor" was shady. I'm like doesn't that just mean the person ordering and distrusting the parts is "in the west" (not even necessarily US) but the parts could be from anywhere? It's not saying much at all.
Suppafly 2y ago
>"Individual components used in fabrication are sourced direct from chip makers and parts distributors." I suspect most of those are from overseas. A lot of that stuff just isn't made in the US. I don't know why they are shady about it, they should just be honest and denote which stuff isn't available at all in the US and which stuff isn't available at reasonable costs in the US.
fecal_henge 2y ago
Are there any other ways to source components?

paulorlando 2y ago

The important quote: "If the tariff from China is 100%, and you know it is going to be 100 % for the next 10 years, you will make a different business decision than if it is, ‘Might be 100%, not sure what's going to be in three months, what's it going to be in a year from now, and what's it going to be in three years from now.’ That uncertainty does not create stable markets. It does not create very accurate business decisions."

GaggiX 2y ago
We don't know what will happen in three days at this point.
timewizard 2y ago
> That uncertainty does not create stable markets. Stable markets with bad outcomes are not worth defending on stability alone. > It does not create very accurate business decisions The business environment is not great. It does seem some part of that is the result of cheap Chinese goods that have displaced labor _and_ environmental costs flooding foreign markets. That China even uses proxy countries to push out even more is instructive. So, if not tariffs, then what should we use to solve this?
- gmm1990 2y ago
  Maybe start with smaller tariffs and go from there. But its not even worth defending current administration policies. Its either completely stupid or deliberately malevolent.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    On what basis are you making this recommendation? Your personal experience negotiating nation-state level agreements between two hegemons?
    - BDPW 2y ago
      There is a deluge of experts in economics and other fields who clearly state this is not the right approach to bringing manufacturing to the US. Why wouldn't we trust experts in their fields?

knowitnone 2y ago

[flagged]

bangaladore 2y ago
Things to break down here... When manufacturing products like this, nobody is using a soldering iron, and certainly not in volume. Its all pick and place + reflow + wave soldering (river of solder). However, when absolutely needed, say phone/laptop repair, you absolutely are "skilled" labor if you can work on these devices.
rapnie 2y ago
What makes it skilled is the amount of soldering points you have to make in an hour, and the grit you need to maintain that rate because you have no choice. The same kind of skills that orange pickers in the US south require, and is more abundant in Mexico apparently, than in the US.
MrLeap 2y ago
What do we have to do to be skilled to you? Build a ship in a bottle while juggling flaming bowling pins?

lazyeye 2y ago

Taiwan used to be just fishing villages, the idea that it could become a powerhouse chip manufacturer was just pure fantasy.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
So was Shenzhen.
- s1mon 2y ago
  If you're ever in Shenzhen, I recommend going to the Shenzhen Museum. It's pretty amazing to see how quickly it grew (~40 years), and the level of stuff that they were making early on vs now. Another big take away for me was that they highlighted who had been the chief customs officer over time. Controlling the flow of goods in and out is matter of pride for Shenzhen and China.
throw39934 2y ago
It took several decades of consistent development. It is not possible to do that, in US with 4 year election cycle. Next gov will just roll back all reforms, and redirects all money...
- kube-system 2y ago
  Case in point: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/trump-joint-address-to-congress/trump-tells-congress-to-end-chips-act-00212871 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/trump-joint... But ultimately, this is why America should look towards congress for enacting lasting change.
  - guax 2y ago
    exactly is not like a president can override congress powers and be able to dismantle agencies or set tariffs for example. everyone will trust the stability of the policies then.

ge96 2y ago

Oh man Purism, well I think Librem but yeah

jvanveen 2y ago

I can't believe people still buy the Purism scam after all these years...I ordered a Librem 5 and a Pinephone back in the days of the other supply chain story(Covid). The Pinephone flew in from China in less than 2 months; the Librem 5 took more than 4 years to arrive. All Purism offered during that time were "opportunities" to invest and exhausting delay stories about failing supply chains, while keeping their customers completely in the dark about their order state. Instead of preying on the goodwill of FOSS enthousiasts, they now try to tap into a new market (nationalism) to sell the same useless overpriced brick to.

bo1024 2y ago
Purism laptops were great when I was a customer. Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about. I wanted to support the company further, and I think they are doing sincere, good, important work, especially on the software side. But these communication and customer relationship issues didn't get better and I switched away.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > Very sad they couldn't fix the issues you're talking about. Which issues? The phones were shipped, albeit with a long delay. Now, you can buy and get them quickly. Sent from my Librem 5 daily driver.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    The issue is pretty obvious to most normal people. My ex bought a Purism phone and laptop, said he would switch to Linux the moment they arrived at his doorstep. He ended up buying a new Macbook and iPhone before any of his Purism hardware started shipping. He might still be using the Apple hardware too. I love FOSS as much as the next guy but you're being outright facetious if you can't see Purism's problem.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      Purism did have a lot of problems with delayed shipping. Today it's just not true though.

mixmastamyk 2y ago

Was just thinking about this the other day. Why were the librem and the pinephone never updated? I'd like to get a new one, but am sure not going to buy something 10+ years old at this point. (Would be happy if a new one was comparable to my old iPhone 6s.) I know there's not a lot of money in them. But if you want sales at all you better update your hardware more often than never.

curtis3389 2y ago
Pine64 updated the PinePhone with the PinePhone Pro.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Guess I thought of that one as more like a "fix," since the first one was not fit for purpose. Still not good enough, needs spec bump and driver support.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    I was looking at potential linux phones the other day, postmarketOS has ports for phones as new as fairphone 4 and OnePlus 6. They don't have any phones with decent camera support though. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Hmm, I saw the fairphone 5 on another page and the hardware support is not substantially worse. Install page says you need fairphone.com to give you permission to unlock. :-/
      - beeflet 2y ago
        yeah most android phones do, it has to do with the modem I think
  - 2y ago

codelord 2y ago

"manufacturing expertise exists primarily in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries" lol. What's this skill that Cambodians have that Americans can't learn or can't be automated by robots? Can they juggle 4 wrenches in the air simultaneously?

tntxtnt 2y ago
The skills to live on $1-$2/hour apparently.
saintfire 2y ago
Expertise exists primarily where things primarily happen. If no companies manufacture complicated products in a particular country that doesn't mean the country is too dumb to make it, it means they don't have a large pool of experts in that field. If you read the article, the founder of purism even says as much. "After we were successful on the Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign, we took our own electronics engineers (EEs), and then we worked with Chinese design and manufacturing through 2018, 2019, and 2020, because that's where every phone is made." So the only phone that qualifies for "Made in the USA" tag learned (at least in part) how to make it from Chinese engineer(ing firm)s.
- codelord 2y ago
  So basically you can find qualified workers everywhere. There's a valid question about the cost. But to say the problem is lacking "skilled workers" is laughable as most of these skills are machine dependent and can only be learned on the job after the factory is built.
  - alwa 2y ago
    Are there skills involved with building such factories and production lines? Where do those people get their experience?
    - codelord 2y ago
      American and multi-national companies often build such factories in low-income countries. It's not that no one in the US knows how to build factories. It's purely a cost/regulation question.

nickpsecurity 2y ago

"On those two products we take the printed circuit board, which is just a blank board that has no components" Don't count on that. On Schneier's blog years ago, we brainstormed attacks on hardware in subversion discussions. One idea was putting a hidden chip in the board itself. Another was modifying the board's material to emanate secrets for RF attacks by a nearby attacker. There's a reason high-security at NSA required TEMPEST shielding. I wonder who prints the circuit boards. On the chip side, substituting one of them with the same covers would be an easy attack. One team showed a tiny change at analog level could have subversive effects with low odds of being spotted. I wonder how they verify they received the correct chips. Just from a domestic, manufacturing angle, the story sounds great. I'm grateful the company made sacrifices to make smartphones in America. I hope their example leads to innovation that drives the prices further down. "we are doing the entire manufacturing process of all of the electronics, meaning resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits" I disagree with this take unless the integrated circuits are designed and fabbed in America and by Purism. They're critical, high-value parts of the product that used to be piles of individual components before ASIC's. If not made here, I'd say upfront it's manufactured in USA "except for (percentage or function of) integrated circuits in it."

1970-01-01 2y ago

$2000 is a punchline to a joke? No?? OK then, we're back at the 1990s cost level, when cell phones were as big as a brick with 50% of it being a battery. https://www.ooma.com/wp-content/uploads/cell-phone-cost-comparison-ooma-edited.jpg https://www.ooma.com/wp-content/uploads/cell-phone-cost-comp...

beeflet 2y ago
It's more like 2017 era technology done at a very small scale with massive markup (I think they mention it costs them like $650 to produce). They don't have the scale needed to access the latest chips.
- charcircuit 2y ago
  Quadcore ARM Cortex-A53 is 2014 era technology.
- sct202 2y ago
  It's kind of amazing the markup and also their listed BOM costs when if a no-name Chinese company made a phone with this level of specs and put it on Amazon it would be like $100.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    I wonder why won't they do this then. There's still no comparable GNU/Linux phone on the market to this day, so this would be a huge opportunity if true. The only exception may be PinePhone Pro, but it isn't much cheaper than Librem 5 and its software maturity is still lacking.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Low volume, mostly sold to govt types.

tcherasaro 2y ago

As one of the “skilled electronics engineers” in the US you could count on US soil (whatever that means) I can tell you this article reads very strangely to a EE. “we were able to take all those designs and spin up our own SMT, it's called Surface Mount Technology” “run that through our surface mount technology by our line operators” “meaning the printed circuit board or PCBA assembly” So, he’s definitely not an EE. No EE talks like this when they are trying to explain the nuts and bolts to a lay person. Either that or the editor took liberties they shouldn’t have.

skort 2y ago
The audio of the interview is on the page. The "Surface Mount Technology" bit is at 7 minutes in.
brookst 2y ago
What, you’ve never dip switched the manufacturing process despite investor resistors?
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Quick, fetch the firewall extinguisher! The AmeriPad is having an unplanned thermal excursion!
tdeck 2y ago
You're just jealous. These guys have spun up their own RoHS and are doing a 100% EDA automation with full Verilog over there. By doing the reflow process (it's a way of building integrated circuits) they're able to offer complete impedance right here in the USA.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  Thanks. I hate it. Have my upvote.
- turtledragonfly 2y ago
  Go back to /r/vxjunkies/, and take your retro-encabulator with you :Þ

intrasight 2y ago

"You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on US soil, and there's probably a million in Shenzhen alone." Anyone else failing to semantically parse that sentence?

sndean 2y ago
Same here. I was trying to insert “on one hand” or similar before the comma, but that’s too small.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  Maybe he just means they're literally countable. Like, accurate to a single digit?
- ben_w 2y ago
  I suspect the quotation was due to that inside their own head — that they were actually going to say "on one hand" but stopped themselves because it wasn't correct.
Lucasoato 2y ago
It may mean that the set of the skilled electronics engineers on US soil is countable, so it is finite or there could be a one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers.
TheDong 2y ago
My read for that was "a human could, reasonably, count one-by-one the number of engineers if they were all arrayed in front of them", while a human can't reasonable count "one, two, three" and get to a million. I would say that a number humans can reasonably count to is about ~15,000, maybe 25k, assuming you're limited to about 15 hours of counting. Any number over about 100k is simply a number humans are incapable of counting up to from one.
ragazzina 2y ago
Maybe they forgot the word "more"? It makes sense to me: "You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on US soil, and [whatever that number may be] there's probably a million MORE in Shenzhen alone."

AustinDev 2y ago

Was this written by GPT2? It makes zero sense to me. I've designed and shipped chips on u.s. soil.

rtkwe 2y ago
It's a transcript of a conversation after the first two paragraphs.

mberning 2y ago

Many of these articles make a great case for why these industries should have been protected domestically years ago.

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

mustyoshi 2y ago

That was an incredibly long interview for them to just say the COGS is only 100$ higher, but we feel the margin should be 1200.

c6400sc 2y ago
There's margin (on BOM cost), and then there's profit margin (above the design cost). Design costs are probably an order of magnitude higher in USA than in China, and can't be spread over hundreds of thousands of units. I'd bet the profit isn't that great.

arduinomancer 2y ago

I don’t understand I get that you can assemble a phone PCB with SMT parts yourself, that’s not that crazy But is there actually an American made SoC that can be used for a phone?

happosai 2y ago
They use i.mx8 by NXP. But that is not a mobile phone SoC. NXP has Fabs in USA where these can be made. On purism the actual mobile phone part is on a separate modem board. The Modem is Made in China, using Qualcomm chip made in Taiwan. I presume QC could make some of their SOCs in TSMC American plants if someone makes a big enough order.

maxglute 2y ago

>We always were sort of maintaining two different bills of materials of Chinese componentry and Western componentry because they're different. Then we produced five different iterations of the Librem 5 phone through Chinese contract manufacturing. And we iterated through those five changes over the course of about 18 months. At that point, we finally had a production ready product. And then we were able to take everything that we did and bring it to US soil. How many iterations can they get done in US in 18 months? That's what's going to kill Made in USA, if you can't get the design done on time, not a few $100 extra in PRC vs west sourced BOM, but millions more spent on development over longer time frame because lack of talent. Is the short/medium term solution still to send "homework" to Chinese prototype teams? I suppose economics of PRC speed and few prototypes > 100%+ tariffs.

dmix 2y ago
Kind of a pointless debate point (and economic plan) as it will always come down to humans and market conditions. Where the humans are who specialize and have deep experience in that stuff chose to work. You cant really fake that stuff via subsidization over long periods without also having all the other pieces of the market in place (all the way from low level workers to capital markets to regulatory environments and even attractive living costs)... otherwise Canada and EU would have grown a larger tech industry by now via their gov programs. There has to be strong organic production and only then can gov help tip the scales upward, instead of generating it from thin air at the top level. If no one is fleeing China to do it in the US the same way people fled American market conditions to build stuff in Asia it won't happen. Creating a forced siloed market through tariffs is probably the least efficient and most expensive method to achieving it. But it can plausibly if the domestic market gets used to not buying the nice things the rest of the world has for a decade (similar to what western gov is choosing to do with banning Chinese EVs but applied a thousandfold).
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > Kind of a pointless debate point (and economic plan) as it will always come down to humans and market conditions. Exactly, even the Fairphone is assembled in China.

xlinux 2y ago

America need more manufacturing and less service industry.

givemeethekeys 2y ago

How much would it cost to create the equivalent of a first generation iPhone 8 with more storage space in America? That phone had everything necessary for communication, navigation, and even some basic photography and entertainment. Imagine a whole industry of distraction free dumb phones being built, by economic necessity right here in America, that then result in lower rates of addiction and better mental health.

agildehaus 2y ago
It's not like you can't doomscroll TikTok on an iPhone 8. I don't think getting slightly lower FPS on 3D games would lower addiction rates.
Jean-Papoulos 2y ago
How is the iPhone 8 anything close to a "dumb phone" ?
- croisillon 2y ago
  my bank doesn’t support iphone 7 anymore so i guess it’s getting closer to a dumbphone, and not doomscrolling my bank account is definitely a plus for my health
  - imhoguy 2y ago
    And it is only matter of iOS version level which apps cut of at. Apple could "fix" that by providing yet another iOS upgrade for these older devices.

ein0p 2y ago

There are plenty of EEs in the good ol' US of A, they're just working as software engineers at the moment out of necessity, since there aren't really any EE jobs here, outside the defense sector and a few large companies. But that is beside the point since it's not "EE" that's being done in China. It's manufacturing and assembly of US designs. And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. The actual work is mostly done by robots, but before it _is_ done by robots, manufacturing capacity needs to be designed and built. Under the best circumstances (e.g. unlimited Apple resources in India) this takes years.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. Rather: cheap (US) labor that can do that. :-)
- ein0p 2y ago
  I don't even think it's the cost. The actual formerly labor-intensive work is mostly done by robots now (save for e.g. the garment industry which is still only very partially automated). It's just that anything in the physical world takes time and effort. As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. I was first exposed to this when I worked for a "mostly hardware" company that also designs chips. They were going to introduce some features into the chips that I needed on the software side, and when asked about the timeline they said "3-4 years". Not a typo. That's how it is in hardware. I have no reason to believe that the timelines are substantially shorter in large scale high tech manufacturing - it's just the nature of the thing. You fuck something up, you can't just patch it, you have to re-do it, and that takes time and $$$. Be all of that as it may, we still _have_ to revitalize the "real" segment of our industry, no matter the cost.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. That's also partly because (physical world) engineers don't invest the same intense effort to enable quick iteration cycles for their area as software engineers do. I cannot say whether this is a "culture problem" of engineering disciplines, or managers don't see a huge economic value that this would enable, and thus don't allow engineers to work on such topics. I at least somewhat know what I am talking about, since when I had to get used to some CAD program, I really felt set back by decades in comparison what are standard practices in software development. A little bit like the difference between programming in a modern programming language and programming in Excel. Thus, in some sense I am impressed by (e.g. mechanical) engineers who despite all this actually are capable to accomplish creating a product (and I do believe that if the practices improved, they could do so much more).

thawawaycold 2y ago

"[...] chip sets that are like ST Micro [a Swiss company with American factories]" I guess that if Ford moved their HQ in DRC, it would be called a Congolese company with American factories, too?

herbst 2y ago
I googled St Micro. It's a france company with no factories in the US since 2010 as far as I can tell.
- thawawaycold 2y ago
  Lol, i hadn't even checked the status (or existence, even) of ST's US factories. I've just known the company for a good amount of years having worked with their products for several projects and thus already knew that the biggest portion of their factories and offices is spread across France and Italy (whence their venture originally started from), so to present it as a Swiss company just underlined a very poor knowledge of the topic IMHO

zombiwoof 2y ago

Made in the USA makes no business sense for everything Then again our POTUS is a self proclaimed genius

DeathArrow 2y ago

>We sell a Chinese made Librem 5 phone for $799. We sell the Liberty phone for $2,000. When you're looking at just those numbers alone, that looks like a giant leap in cost. But there's a couple of factors that are not publicly known when you're looking at just those prices. When you're looking at COGS, cost of goods sold, our Librem 5 phone is equivalent in cost to about an iPhone. It's about $500 and some odd dollars, $550. So we can see that the Librem 5 phone doesn't have a very high margin when we sell it. The Liberty phone, same COGS componentry wise, but to produce it on US soil, we're adding not quite a hundred dollars. So it's about $650 to produce that entire phone. So the phone that costs them $550 is sold for about $800, while the phone that costs them $650 is sold for $2000. I wonder why is such a big difference in the margins.

altacc 2y ago
These are interesting numbers and they're oddly buried towards the bottom of the article. A ~20% mark up for mostly sourcing and manufacturing in the US is less than I'd expected, especially given the 250% price difference. He does say something about why that is: > It's the fact that it's a secure supply chain, that you know, staff that's completely auditing every component, which means we're selling to a government security market with all those additional layers that we've added on top. So a mix of marketing and supply chain security. Businesses charge the price people will tolerate paying.

DeathArrow 2y ago

>We can't have some nefarious chip put into the supply chain from a hostile country. On the other hand, China can think the same. Why rely on Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia? Or why rely on any US based tech, including software and services?

darthrupert 2y ago

A year ago I would've been ready and willing to pay double price for a fully US-made phone. Purism's liberty phone seemed interesting. Now, I will not buy american products at any price. It feels totally ridiculous now to even talk about moving the supply chain to the US.

fsflover 2y ago
China is still no better and this phone runs FLOSS. It's still the best offer for the hackers and activists.
nottorp 2y ago
> A year ago I would've been ready and willing to pay double price for a fully US-made phone. Why? What justified double the price a year ago? Especially since you sound like you're not an USer... Ok maybe avoiding China would have been a good idea 1 year ago too. But from that to overpaying for something just because it's made in the most expensive country in the world...
- darthrupert 2y ago
  Good question, I honestly don't know anymore. Some manifestation of soft power that vanished into the air?

HenryBemis 2y ago

> ‘Let's take an existing made-in-China product and then just produce the same thing in the US.’ This is what got me. I remember 40-50 years ago everything (or most) "made in the USA". And how "Chinese product" was an insult while "American product" was a badge of honour. Oh how the turnstable.. When I was studying in the UK the _most_ diligent students were the Chinese ones. First to come, last to leave, spent hours and hours on workshops, but they were not interested in staying in the UK to live/work there. As if they were on a mission. Go-Learn-Return-SpreadKnowledge. Many other nationalities were tempted by the mighty-GBP and stayed. But not the Chinese. Vast majority of them learned as much as they could and then went back home. That was mid-90s. And those 20yo students of the mid-90s are 50yo with great studies and 30 years of experience, and there were thousands of them studying all over the UK, USA, and other countries. So there you have it.. I keep thinking of "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio" [0]. The game is almost over, time for the next cycle.. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

ralferoo 2y ago

I'm surprised that they admitted that their cost to produce the phone in China is $550 and they sell it for $799, while the cost to produce the phone in the US is $650 and they sell it for $2000. That's a 45% markup on one and 207% markup on the other. Taking just those figures in mind, they shouldn't be at all worried about tariffs - anything more than an 18% tariff, it's cheaper for them to build in the US than China for US customers. Honestly, that's much lower than I expected, especially considering they're even more restrictive in their component sourcing than most companies would need to be because they're catering to a security-focused group. I guess the real issue is that they don't have any more production capacity in the US, rather than it just being a cost issue.

dwighttk 2y ago
They don’t just arbitrarily set prices… demand comes into it.
MarcellusDrum 2y ago
Is this the price in just components? I skimmed through the article and that wasn't clear. Because if it doesn't include labor costs, then its reasonable that the US phone sells for a lot more.
- hkmaxpro 2y ago
  Your question prompted me to look up “cost of goods sold”. From https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cogs.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cogs.asp > Cost of goods sold (COGS) refers to the direct costs of producing the goods sold by a company. This amount includes the cost of the materials and labor directly used to create the good. It excludes indirect expenses, such as distribution costs and sales force costs. So the $550 or $650 COGS includes the cost of labor for manufacturing, but excludes (say) marketing and auditing costs.
  - balderdash 2y ago
    And would exclude all of the R&D, certification and testing, procurement, and in some cases depreciation from factories/equipment

WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago

Cost is 650 and they sell it for 2k? lol By the time the US learns what "efficiency" means, China will be building on Mars

b8 2y ago

Purism also markups their mini PC by a lot. Bunch of scammers IMO. Source: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10510U_62546345460.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10...

fsflover 2y ago
You can't just say this without providing a source.
- b8 2y ago
  Sure, https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10510U_62546345460.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Top-mini-pc-i7-10... is the minipc they use. Just buy it directly from China and install Coreboot.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > Just buy it directly from China and install Coreboot. "Just" is doing a lot of work here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638323
    - b8 2y ago
      There's YouTube tutorials and folks that will help out. It's the price you pay when you save money.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        So many people prefer to pay to avoid these troubles, which is fine. It's just not for you.

ferguess_k 2y ago

I wonder how much it costs to do the following -- let's backtrack. We already know that US companies can design phones, like Apple. OK so the next step is to figure out where to source the components -- and under the context of OP's article, that means which components can be sourced directly from the US, or from the EU (i.e. manufactured inside EU, not branded in EU but sourced elsewhere). Once we can figure out which components are economically feasible to be manufactured in the US and EU with the tariff, we might be able to go from there and slowly expand the operation to the rest of the chain.

malvim 2y ago

Something that caught my attention is how they started with Chinese design and engineering because that was where the knowledge was. They they learned and appropriated that knowledge to the point where this was not needed anymore. I love this approach, as it’s not purely commercial, it’s focused on knowledge, and it’s not “stealing” tech, they probably have that on their contracts and the like. Also, it’s EXACTLY what China set out to do a few decades ago, and foreign industrialists and capitalists were so eager to spend less, they flocked over there, and the Chinese now have the knowledge as well as the labor force do to what they do. Some people love to cry about how China is “stealing” American tech, when in reality no one ever pointed a gun at a tech CEO’s head and said “you must move manufacturing to China.” They did it because it was profitable, and they knew the terms. I’m not saying industrial espionage doesn’t happen in China, it does, as it does anywhere else. I just don’t like the rhetoric of saying they’re “bad” for doing a perfectly legal business tactic.

bitbasher 2y ago

I had a Librem 15 and I will never buy another Purism product again. I wish it was good, but the product broke in less than two years. Worse yet, when it broke Purism couldn't help at all because they stopped making the 15s. That will be a hard pass for me...

fsflover 2y ago
I'm still using my Librem 15 and it works fine though.
- bitbasher 2y ago
  Lucky! The first issue I had was the battery not being replaceable since they stopped making the 15's battery and couldn't offer any OEM/part info for a replacement. The second issue was more serious, the motherboard simply died and couldn't boot. At least I was able to recover the drive/ram which went into my new system76 laptop (that was 2.5 years ago).
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > Lucky! There are other lucky people on their forum: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-repo-for-microcode/27600 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-rep... and https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-repo-for-microcode/27600 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15v4-and-non-free-purism-rep.... There are unlucky ones too, but less it seems: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15-v4-laptop-not-turning-on-or-charging-need-advice/27541/10 https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-15-v4-laptop-not-turning-on-...

nelblu 2y ago

> It has 4 GB of memory, and reviewers say that its specs are pretty outdated. In my imaginary world, I wish someone stood up to this type of insanity. This would be a good time to force Apple / Google to revive old devices and allow the supply chains to adjust manufacturing things outside of China while the rest of the world pauses and lives with some outdated hardware technology. I know this is probably not feasible because Apple and Google probably survive on selling of new phones, but hey I can at least dream!

fsflover 2y ago
Related: https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/
guywithahat 2y ago
In this case, part of the criticism is that the phone doesn't function well. Even when it was new, it was slow and clunky, and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task. They may have optimized it a bit since, but fundamentally they chose an under-powered CPU to hit certain open source requirements. I agree though that for many things (such as their laptop), specs often don't matter. Either I need a high-end, GPU accelerated computer, or I need a terminal. Having the newest CPU doesn't matter if it achieves other desired goals.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > and the issue seemed to be the CPU wasn't up to the task. This is definitely not true, the issue is in the non-optimized software. I tried SXMo [0] on a Pinephone (which is much slower than the Librem), and it was unbelievably fast, including watching videos and looking a maps in a split-screen mode, simultaneously and smoothly. Android had 10 years and a huge team of developers to optimize the UI. [0] https://sxmo.org/ https://sxmo.org/
  - nolist_policy 2y ago
    Sxmo is based on a keyboard-driven tiling window manager. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Touch gestures suck so much[1] that the most comfortable way to navigate it is with the volume buttons and power button. Each of these buttons has like 3 different functions with double, tripple click etc. Changing the volume is not one of the functions[2]. Auto screen orientation only works 50% of the time, because the whole thing is based on a pile of shell scripts. There is no lock screen included. No, I'm not kidding. [1] https://sxmo.org/docs/gettingstarted/ https://sxmo.org/docs/gettingstarted/ [2] https://man.sr.ht/~anjan/sxmo-docs/USERGUIDE.md#strongglobal-ui-controlsstrong https://man.sr.ht/~anjan/sxmo-docs/USERGUIDE.md#strongglobal...

cbmask 2y ago

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csours 2y ago

ctrl+f "moat" Hmm. So why can they have a 3x markup? What is the moat? Who will overpay by $1,000? 1. People who are required to use a product with very specific certifications. 2. People who want to use a product with a desirable backstory. In the first instance the US military requires testing and certifications that are costly to achieve, creating a moat for military suppliers. In the second instance, some podcast listeners are willing to significantly overpay for generic supplements due to the backstory and their trust in that podcaster. I am curious what the market breakdown is for this device - how many do they sell for case 1? how many do they sell for case 2? Also, if they don't sell very many, then their manufacturing capital costs, design and supply chain overheads per phone will be very high.

pengaru 2y ago

> It's going from raw materials to finished goods at our facility. More lies from Mr. Weaver... I'm sorry but an imx5 SoC is not a raw material.

christkv 2y ago

A big company like Apple can literally just buy the expertise that is needed to move production anywhere that makes sense. Flex likewise can do the same. There will be some ramp up time but these companies operate as scale.

bfrog 2y ago

This is kind of like the PCB pricing story, they could be priced competitively but that's not how the market in the US for domestic PCB manufacturing has been setup. It's been setup to target things that must be made here, where pricing is usually dictated by that demand rather than a competitive market rate. If china were taken out of the picture (e.g. JLCPCB) ideally a competitor would attempt to take what was that market. Or not? Maybe the margins are low and this is why it hasn't happened here already.

Empathy3 2y ago

Companies will never pay an American worker what an American worker needs to survive or live. This is going nowhere because unlike China where street food is had for pennies, American street food is BK, McD's and Taco Bell for $$$. Cost of living? Americans want homes, they don't want to live with their families, they want cars not bikes. Manufacturing in America will take a century. IMO