iPhone 17 To Be Assembled In India As Apple Aims To Further Diversify Supply Chain (macrumors.com) 72
According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will start introductory production on the standard iPhone 17 in India, marking the first time the company begins development of a new iPhone outside of China. MacRumors reports: Apple will opt to assemble the standard iPhone 17 in India because it has a "lower difficulty" design that will minimize risk. Apple has been manufacturing older iPhones and other devices in India since for several years now in an effort to move more of its manufacturing out of China. Apple has slowly started giving factories in India more responsibility, and began iPhone 14 production in the country just a few weeks after the device launched in September 2022. iPhone 15 production started even earlier, with factories in the country assembling the base iPhone 15 model prior to launch, but assembly still started in China first.
As of now, Kuo believes that 12 to 14 percent of global iPhone shipments are made in India, with that proportion to increase to 20 to 25 percent by 2024. In addition to allowing Apple to move manufacturing away from China, increasing production in India provides Apple with an opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the Indian government. India is a key market for Apple due to growing demand for Apple products in the country.
As of now, Kuo believes that 12 to 14 percent of global iPhone shipments are made in India, with that proportion to increase to 20 to 25 percent by 2024. In addition to allowing Apple to move manufacturing away from China, increasing production in India provides Apple with an opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the Indian government. India is a key market for Apple due to growing demand for Apple products in the country.
How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or would using non-wage-slave assembly workers bite into their obscene profit margin too much?
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Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect there are other issues, such as the fact that Chinese labour is not organised at all; they do as they are told, and a lot extra can be demanded from them if needed. Also, Tim Cook mentioned that one of the good things about China is that it's easy to set up factories there, as the required knowledge on manufacturing, tooling etc. is readily available. Maybe that's why they've not given the more complicated jobs to Indian factories thus far. Would that be a factor as well when moving production to the US?
Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, if they wanted to make a "status" thing out of it, so be it...
But I'd pay extra to keep the labor money in the US with US workers.
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I've often said this as well. I would gladly pay a $100 tax on my $1,200 phone to be able to be able to say it was built in a country with some semblance of workers' rights. Heck, make an API that app developers can call and let them incentivize it with their own rewards, too.
Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fun part: over 30% of iphone parts are US sourced, making it easily #1 source for parts. #2 was usually Taiwan or Japan iirc. Why is final assembly so important over everything else?
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Probably because they're almost holding the workers hostage who do the manufacturing. They live in company housing on company grounds next to the company plant, and I expect that they shop in the company store and use the company for their banking system.
China was promised a worker's utopia and instead received a state that is a unitary corporation with all major businesses essentially as divisions, and all of the residents are workers ineligible for unionization as that would be "against the Revolution."
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That's the propaganda. In reality, there's abject misery at Foxconn factories right now, with people begging those "slavery" jobs to come back. Foxconn factories used to be same to pretty much any single industry small town anywhere in the world. It's own little world with its own shopping street, its own living spaces, it's own culture. All of that is going away, and there are tens of thousands of workers in each of these cities begging for the "slavery" to come back.
It's almost like they don't share the e
Re: How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:2)
It doesnâ(TM)t matter whether you want to, regulation in the US are so strict, they couldnâ(TM)t do it if they wanted to. Biden tried most recently by offering subsidies and then immediately undermined it by demanding those subsidies are used for unionized labor. And we can see how well that is going for the auto industry which will soon have to announce layoffs in the ranges of 30-40% as their workers after the latest strike now average $100/hour (thatâ(TM)s $200k/year for screwing in some b
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Not according to this: [fortune.com]
Wells Fargo Analyst Colin Langan estimated that the contracts would drive up the companies’ hourly total labor costs by about 30%, to $76.08 at Ford, $78.15 at GM and $75.63 at Stellantis. Analysts have said that foreign automakers with U.S. factories generally have hourly labor costs of $45 to $60, which includes what they spend on worker benefits.
At GM, workers would get cost-of-living pay that would bring raises to a compounded 33%, with top assembly plant workers making more than $42 per hour. Top-scale workers there now make around $32 per hour.
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The total labor costs will increase to $75 now and go up year over year after that.
Doesn't matter how much it actually is, driving in bolts in a factory should be minimum wage. This isn't exactly a job for high skilled, highly educated people. $75 is still $150k/year, $42/h is still $80k+, the entry-level programmers that will fix the robots that will replace these people make less.
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I'd pay more money for an iPhone assembled in the US.
Hell, if they wanted to make a "status" thing out of it, so be it...
But I'd pay extra to keep the labor money in the US with US workers.
Apple could move their production to the US and not charge a penny more.
They just wont.
There's nothing special about Apple products that justifies how overpriced they are. Sorry fanboys, needed to be said.
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So that next iPhone could cost 50 bucks more if it was made in the US?
I have a hunch that 50 bucks won't even register in the overall price increase.
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So it would cost $40 more in manufactured in the states?
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It's India saying if you don't make the phones in India you wont be allowed to sell them to Indians.
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It might also have some other elements based on where new American laws say that microprocessors are allowed to go. The new laws restrict what's allowed to go to China. Ostensibly those laws are for what's allowed to stay in China, but given the potential to mendaciously mark perfectly good chips as bad and destroyed in the inventory control system in order to abscond with them for other uses, I could see a desire to increasingly move the manufacture of products containing controlled components out of the
Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheap labor might actually be the sole determinant here. The thing with China is, it isn't really a cheap labor company anymore. I was shocked a decade ago talking to a dude in bejing on a video game chat when I asked him about his rent, and it was almost as high as mine (Maybe 3/4 of what I'm paying), for a 1 bedroom apartment, which he could afford on a barmans wage. He lamented that all the labour jobs where going offshore to places like the philipines. "Welcome to the first world buddy" was the best I could offer him.
The reality is Chinas wages and living standards have improved considerably in the past 3 decades. Maybe not quite as high as those in the US, Europe or Australia, but its catching up, and that is causing chinese companies to fret that their competitive advantage is disapating hence Chinese interest in building up influence in africa, south america and south east asia.
India however, still is dirtfarmer poor by comparison. Its got great engineering talent , but it hasnt the infrastructure yet to retain it. But its working on it, and theres a lot of interest from the US and Europe in making India the next China because if theres one thing India does have, is a LOT of young people who would happily work for shit wages in a factory to get off the farm.
I'm of the firm conviction that the odds of a real war with china over taiwan are low because taiwan's status quo is beneficial to both the US AND China. Sure there are egos at play, and lots of sabre rattling and fighter pilots and subs doing dumb provocative brinksman shit, but at the end of the day the US gets to trade with China via Taiwan as the middleman whilst still allowing both parties bang their chests and bellow "CHINA STRONG" or "USA #1". And thats an arrangement that politically and economically good for both.
But if India can provide cheaper labor, well thats gonna be the end of that.
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Like every country, they are going through an industrial revolution, and out the other side into a more service based economy with higher wages. Unlike many Western countries, they are trying to bring manufacturing with them by taking it high end, similar to what Japan and Germany have done.
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Don't forget, wages in China are alot lower if you go pass the eastern part of China, near the coast(and the big cities).
My understanding is, the further West you go (into China), the lower the wages are.
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Yeah I've been told that by a few Chinese dudes that iin western rural and factory provinces the standard of living (and wages) is significantly lower than in the more cosmpolitain eastern provinces
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But if India can provide cheaper labor, well thats gonna be the end of that.
Indian Oligarch Murthy has recently suggested that young Indians should get used to working 70 hours a week to increase "productivity" and now Apple is looking at relocating from China to India.
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It's not cost effective. This has been brought up over and over. Several reputable analysis companies have tackled this and every last single one has stated that the COST to make the phone would be approximately 1.2X in the USA. So if a particular iPhone costs $300 for Apple to make it would cost ~$660 to make in the USA.
The issues are as follows:
1) Labor is more expensive.
2) Raw materials are more expensive, not available, must be imported.
3) Regulatory issues with import/export for #2.
4) Many of the c
Re: How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:3)
Doubtful. The same can be said of India but they are making them there.
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Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:4)
We would have to all reinvent America to make manufacturing a reality here.
When the US goes to war with China over Taiwan, the reinventing will become quite urgent.
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Maybe not but when TSMC is destroyed in the coming invasion, it will set us back a long time.
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Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why I didn't think Russia would actually invade Ukraine. There was no conceivable upside. Guess what, they did it anyway. Imperialist dictators gonna dictate.
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While I won't rule it out, I do think that the situation has some differences.
China is in a generally strong global position. Admittedly all the trade war stuff has slightly diminished their position, but generally speaking they are still in a very strong economic condition and exerting global authority through that status.
Contrast with Russia, who has struggled and not been able to secure a position as an economic superpower. They have petroleum and that's certainly something, but generally they are lacki
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When the US goes to war with China over Taiwan, the reinventing will become quite urgent.
If the US gets into a war with China it won't matter where iPhones are made, or iMacs, or Androids, or any consumer electronic device. The supply chain will be focused on the war and the civilian market will take a backseat. Chips are the modern day equivalent of the dual use technologies that were rationed during WWII.
The US defense industrial base is struggling to meet Ukrainian needs. It would implode if confronted with a major power conflict. We'd be looking at a whole of society mobilization with
Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not just that labor is expensive in America, but that it is often unavailable.
Nearly every business in my city has a "help wanted" sign. Some shops have cut back on their opening hours because there's not enough staff.
TSMC scaled back their new fab in Arizona when they realized there aren't enough workers available to run it.
So where can Apple find 200,000 Americans to assemble iPhones? There is nowhere in America with an available labor pool that size.
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Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:4, Interesting)
Labor is not necessarily the problem. Finding the labor is, though.
Apple has done US manufacturing before - but on the small scale and even then there are problems. For example, the trashcan Mac Pro - their screw supplier was running triple shifts and still could not make enough screws for Apple. Apple had to halt production because they couldn't get enough screws.
They've done it with the iMac - but had US made ones made int he US and international ones made in China - again, problems getting enough supplies and materials to satisfy US demand. Eventually Apple had to relent and have US models made both in the US and China just to meet demand.
Of course, Apple won't be using American workers to assemble the product - they'd be using robots. Americans are much more productive than Chinese workers, and the prices do reflect that. However, it's not that the workers are slacking, it's that American workers generally oversee robots - and one worker can oversee a number of robots assembling product.
But the problem remains - hiring enough Americans to oversee enough robots to handle manufacturing in quantity. This is a gigantic problem.
Re: How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:2)
If Apple marketed a âoemade in USAâ version that was double or triple the price and externally identifiable as such it would sell.
Re:How about manufacturing in the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was looked at, time and again.
There was an article from a couple years back or so, something that stuck with me was roughly like this:
If you want a certain simple custom component (say, a non-standard screw) to be made in the USA, you might fill a meeting room with representatives of companies able to make them. In China, you would fill an entire stadium.
Furthermore, production scaling is shit in the USA compared to China. If you want to switch from 10K pieces a month to 1M pieces a month, within the next 6 months, it would be impossible in the USA. But in China, everyone who is able to manufacture that part would band together and collectively make that happen in 3 months or less. Those people know when to compete and when to collaborate. USA manufacturers only compete, and most of them are doing it badly.
Now here's a true story.
A few years back, someone I know was looking to start selling a branded smartphone. He contacted a few manufacturers from China. To those manufacturers, smartphone specs didn't matter. You wanted a high-end phone, sure, no problem. You wanted a basic smartphone, again, no problem. What mattered most was the answers to the same two main questions, before being able to quote a price:
1. How many do you want to be made per month?
2. Which failure rate are you willing to accept?
The higher each of those numbers were, the lower the end product price would be.
...move more of its manufacturing out of China (Score:2)
Assembly, not manufacturing. Try moving the components suppliers.
Re: ...move more of its manufacturing out of China (Score:2)
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Not surprising. They just throw people at the problem and if the result in 50% crap, then all that means is they sell the 50% that passed QC at double the price. When the price is pennies per unit to begin with, western manufacturing can never compete on any product that requires scale.
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There can be import cost issues too. Most of the parts are not made in the US, and it would not be trivial to get them made there. So you have to import them, and importing lots of separate parts for assembly gets expensive.
I don't know if India is making more parts or just has easier/cheaper import options than the US, but some years ago I looked at having a product assembled in the US and it was much cheaper to do it in the UK and send the completed product over. The issue we had was that the modem was US
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Found the person who wants slavery back.
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Ignore wages, iPhones ship to about 200 different countries and make use of A LOT of non-American parts. The US lacks the quantity of people needed and have insanely expensive international shipping rates.
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Or would using non-wage-slave assembly workers bite into their obscene profit margin too much?
If they ever make an iPhone in the US completely? It'll be priced much, MUCH higher, and given a special color or label or moniker to differentiate it from the mere mortal foreign iPhones that the plebes carry. Several companies outside the tech sector do this today. Some of them are even fairly even-handed and open about why the price is higher when you purchase "Made in USA" versions of the more commonly available import product lines. But I can't see Apple producing anything in America without passing th
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"A dog is what a door is perpetually on the wrong side of." -Albert Einstein
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Apple is doing the (Score:1)
...needful thing.
How about manufacturing with robots (Score:2)
They are designing it wrong. Seriously, what are humans needed for in making any smartphone? They need to have a fully robotic makeflow. I mean what can’t a robot do? Robots are better than humans in PCB pick and place. They need to put everything neatly on a PCB and not require a human for anything. Then they can manufacture anywhere. If humans are required for the assembly they have designed it wrong.
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Silly question but why not design robot friendly interconnects?
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If you look at how the iPhone design has evolved, the connectors went from being flat flex with fiddly connectors to thin press-down ones.
The press down ones are faster for humans to assemble, but also much easier for robots to assemble too.
Re:How about manufacturing with robots (Score:4, Interesting)
Small manipulators that can match human hands don't exist (yet) in any meaningful fashion. Most of the time, you either just manually program the exact movement and pressure pattern (which fails on assembly because part tolerances aren't exactly the same so things get either not plugged or broken with that sort of automation for example).
Robots excel in highly predictable movement pattern. Putting things on a motherboard for example is something machine is much better than humans are. But when it comes to actually manipulating things, requiring reacting to feedback, they're hopelessly behind.
Something that amazon discovered when they tried making robot that do the picking. Billions of dollars in R&D later, their robots couldn't match even a half baked drugged out of his mind picker, much less half a decent one. Either they dropped things a lot or their crushed things a lot. Accurate manipulation based on feedback is actually that hard.
It's one of those things we see as easy because evolution spent billions of years designing us to think of it as easy.
I sincerely hope India (Score:2)
latin america (Score:1)
Why doesn't Apple outsource to latin america? are the wages there too high?
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Is there any Latin American country with a more or less stable government?
Further diversify (Score:1)
Translation (Score:2)
China got too expensive, we gotta find cheaper slaves.