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I disagree. Foxconn employees are employees of Foxconn in name only. They are effectively employees of Apple. No Apple hardware would be produced at the price p
by dba7dba 12y ago
I disagree. Foxconn employees are employees of Foxconn in name only. They are effectively employees of Apple. No Apple hardware would be produced at the price point, in the quantity needed if Foxconn did not exist. So imo, the revenue per employee of Apple as we are talking about is skewed badly.
- hueving 12y agoI disagree because at some point in the supply chain you have to draw the line. What about the company that made the processors? What about the memory? what about the one that mined the materials?
- dba7dba 12y agoHow about picking a car company for example? Don't most car companies directly hire employees that assemble the final product (car)?
- Cthulhu_ 12y agoYeah, but you can't stuff a hundred thousand cars in a single shipping container.
- dba7dba 12y agoHundreds of thousands of cars are shipped between continents every year...
- dognotdog 12y agoBut, most parts that go into a car are manufactured by suppliers, not the car company. Also, many employees are not direct hires, but employed by an intermediary agency. Long story short, while they do the final assembly more directly, 90% of the work is still done in China, figuratively speaking.
- dba7dba 12y agoI understand no large company can literally directly hire employees for all their material, parts, tools, and assembly. BUT most large car companies still directly hire own employees to put together the final product. And my point is Apple has hardly any employee that actually assembles the end product (in this case iphone, ipad, macbook etc), other than a few in US that build custome Mac Pro in US. So before one gets giddy about how profit per Apple employee is so high, he/she should remember there are literally hundreds of thousands of people assembling the final product but they are not counted as employees of Apple. You can call this practice any one of these: 1. It's smart business and that's what capitalism is all about. 2. It's immoral and unpatriotic. From what I know, no other non-China and non-US phone companies outsource 99% of assembling. Maybe I'm wrong.
- ryanmonroe 12y agoRight, I think a good way to draw that line is to not include employees who work for more than just the one company. Foxconn manufactures products for more companies than just Apple. Major Customers of Foxconn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers
- Cthulhu_ 12y agoBut it would be unskewed again if you calculate the expenses Apple made for production costs as profit for Foxconn and added that to the figures.
- smackfu 12y agoIf Foxconn is essentially the "low margin" half of Apple, then it wouldn't really unskew it totally.
- dba7dba 12y agoEven if Foxconn charged Apple really fat margin for assembling the final products in China, it's still WAY cheaper than hiring American workers in US. No doubt about that.
- Retric 12y agoFoxconn could also just fully automate iPhone assembly without Apple caring. http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/185960-foxconn-is-attempting-to-replace-its-human-workers-with-thousands-of-robots http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/185960-foxconn-is-att... "Chinese site IT Home is reporting that Apple — the company most associated with Foxconn — will be the first company to use these new robots." As to being Foxconn workers in name only the Chinese government makes it much simpler to higher Chinese workers though a Chinese owned company than directly employing them.