7 ms·

Really? Largely based in India? :-(

• DINKDINK 12y ago
  Why is that a bad thing?
  • Gorbzel 12y ago
    IBM has positioned itself as the consulting company that understands the need to be truly global, even running ads on television emphasizing that recently. What they're pitching for data storage and consulting is just as beneficial for development. Thus, if they're saying one thing and then doing all their dev work in India, that sucks.
• r0h1n 12y ago
  No more than Apple is "largely manufactured in China"?
  • manticore_alpha 12y ago
    Except Apple products are developed, designed, coded, tested, etc - all in the United States.
    • JohnTHaller 12y ago
      The code is. I don't think the hardware itself is QAed in the US.
      • manticore_alpha 12y ago
        It definitely is. Huge testing facilities, radio testing, durability, temperature cycling. All done by Apple in the US.
        • final 12y ago
          Only the devices sold in US.
        • JohnTHaller 12y ago
          Do you know if they QA every device or just spot checks for quality of batches? I'd also guess this is only for US-sold devices as it'd be a bit prohibitive to ship them all from China to the US for QA and then ship them to Europe for sale. Is that the case?
          • ridiculous_fish 12y ago
            I work in manufacturing test, so I can speak to this. There's a difference between design/development test and manufacturing test. Thermal, drop, vibration, interference, etc. tests are design tests: they verify that units built according to spec are sufficiently reliable. None of the devices you buy have undergone these tests, because the tests are destructive. You wouldn't want to buy an iPhone that had been baked in an oven, or dropped on a concrete floor. It's best to perform these tests near where development happens, to enable fast iteration and easily involve the hardware engineers. Manufacturing tests verify that individual units have been built according to spec. For example, that there's no electrical shorts, missing connections, cosmetic defects, etc. All of the devices you buy have undergone a large battery of manufacturing tests, which exercised all of the hardware features of the device. These tests are performed at the factory, because it's better to catch these failures early in the assembly process. For example, if a camera module is busted, you want to know before it's installed into an iPhone. Of course Apple isn't unique in this way. This is just how manufacturing is done.
            • JohnTHaller 12y ago
              Thanks for the detailed response. I wasn't as aware of all that as I should be. I'd wager it varies based on the level of the brand, though. So, you could expect this with something like Apple or Samsung or HTC, but lesser brands may not even test their wares before shipping them. My recent purchases of a Monoprice keyboard and network adapter, for instance, both of which were DOA with obvious manufacturing defects.
• _delirium 12y ago
  IBM hasn't reported country-by-country employment data in several years, but it's widely assumed that India has the plurality of their workforce (about 1/3), with the U.S. having their second-biggest headcount. One big part of their business these days is large-scale IT consulting, and while they position themselves as a significantly "premium" provider compared to e.g. Accenture, they probably feel more constrained in just how much of a premium they can charge than they used to, so have been trying to get their cost structure to be not too far from that of their big IT-consulting-shop competitors.