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Wasn't it Steve Jobs himself who said to President Obama at a dinner that "those jobs aren't coming back" when talking about high-tech manufacturing? I've been

Wasn't it Steve Jobs himself who said to President Obama at a dinner that "those jobs aren't coming back" when talking about high-tech manufacturing? I've been reading about other technology companies besides Apple doing this as well. Element and Vizio, two value-tier (think Wal-Mart and Target) flat-screen TV manufacturers have major assembly plants here in the states. They cited a combo of labor, shipping and duty being cost-ineffective at their price levels to make and ship from China.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Those are actually not contradictory. Apparently, it's cost effective to assemble products in the US that incorporate large LCD screens. Apple was already assembling BTO iMacs in the US, and now some standard iMacs as well. iPhones, iPods, and iPads are a different story, as they're a lot smaller. An airplane can fit a lot more boxed 9.7" iPads than it can fit boxed 21.5" iMacs – 28 times, to be exact (I just did the math.) As for Steve Jobs' remarks, it seems he wasn't talking about iMacs but about iPads, iPhones and iPods: "As Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas. Why can't that work come home? Obama asked. Jobs' reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he said, according to another dinner guest." http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239999 http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239...
- arrrg 14y ago
  Even “those jobs aren’t coming back” is a somewhat polite and euphemistic answer. Those jobs were never even in the USA in the first place. The USA could never support making phones and tablets on the scale on which they are made in China.
jseliger 14y ago
> Wasn't it Steve Jobs himself who said to President Obama at a dinner that "those jobs aren't coming back" when talking about high-tech manufacturing? Interestingly enough, The Atlantic just ran two long articles about the return of American manufacturing: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/mr-china-comes-to-america/309160/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/mr-china... and http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-inso... . Both are worth reading in full. Clearly we're not going to get back to the 1950s, when manufacturing provided much of the U.S.'s employment base. But we're still substantial gains in the sector, and the belief that outsourcing always makes financial sense is disappearing.
yardie 14y ago
Not only are "those" jobs not coming back, in a decade or so they won't even exist. Already we have fused the LCD and digitizer glass and moved just about everything into an SOC. How long until the glass and SOC are also merged? Manual assembly of the iPhones isn't coming to the US, nor is it staying in China.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

Those are actually not contradictory. Apparently, it's cost effective to assemble products in the US that incorporate large LCD screens. Apple was already assembling BTO iMacs in the US, and now some standard iMacs as well. iPhones, iPods, and iPads are a different story, as they're a lot smaller. An airplane can fit a lot more boxed 9.7" iPads than it can fit boxed 21.5" iMacs – 28 times, to be exact (I just did the math.) As for Steve Jobs' remarks, it seems he wasn't talking about iMacs but about iPads, iPhones and iPods: "As Steve Jobs of Apple spoke, Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas. Why can't that work come home? Obama asked. Jobs' reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he said, according to another dinner guest." http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239999 http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120123/ARTICLE/301239...

arrrg 14y ago
Even “those jobs aren’t coming back” is a somewhat polite and euphemistic answer. Those jobs were never even in the USA in the first place. The USA could never support making phones and tablets on the scale on which they are made in China.

jseliger 14y ago

> Wasn't it Steve Jobs himself who said to President Obama at a dinner that "those jobs aren't coming back" when talking about high-tech manufacturing? Interestingly enough, The Atlantic just ran two long articles about the return of American manufacturing: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/mr-china-comes-to-america/309160/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/mr-china... and http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-inso... . Both are worth reading in full. Clearly we're not going to get back to the 1950s, when manufacturing provided much of the U.S.'s employment base. But we're still substantial gains in the sector, and the belief that outsourcing always makes financial sense is disappearing.

yardie 14y ago

Not only are "those" jobs not coming back, in a decade or so they won't even exist. Already we have fused the LCD and digitizer glass and moved just about everything into an SOC. How long until the glass and SOC are also merged? Manual assembly of the iPhones isn't coming to the US, nor is it staying in China.