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China Microsoft Cellphones News

Microsoft Closing Two Phone Factories In China 85

Posted by Soulskill from the end-call dept.
randomErr writes: Microsoft is closing two factories in China by the end of March. About 9,000 people worked in these factories, and those jobs were cut a while back as part of the company's major restructuring after its Nokia purchase. Much of the equipment located in these factories from Beijing and the southeastern city of Dongguan is being shipped to Vietnam.
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Microsoft Closing Two Phone Factories In China More

Microsoft Closing Two Phone Factories In China

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  • Well, Dice finally did it (Score:4, Informative)

    by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @08:53AM (#49146299)

    They finally got rid of the ability to follow comment histories on the nobeta. Now it's impossible to see if a comment has been replied to and following any comment thread has to be done manually, one post at a time.

    • Re:Well, Dice finally did it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:06AM (#49146401)

      Just a bug. Will be back.

      • Genuine question (no flamebait): what procedures does does Dice follow to do software testing before release? There has been an interesting amount of bugs introduced lately, in the Slashdot interface, like the huge gray strip on the right appearing on Chrome. This bug has been now fixed, so props for that, but it took weeks. Shouldn't it have been caught during the testing phase, before releasing the changes into the live system?

        • Re:Well, Dice finally did it (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Soulskill ( 1459 ) Works for Slashdot on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:56AM (#49146793)

          I'm not on the Engineering team, and I don't make the Product decisions, so I'm not going to be of much help with your question. Yeah, the bugs probably should have been squashed before releasing -- but the Slashdot codebase is a monster, and there are a lot of edges cases among users, so I think the release is done under the "perfect is the enemy of good" philosophy. Hopefully we can get the big ones taken care of in short order.

          • Thanks for the answer, and I agree with the "perfect is the enemy of the good"-philosophy, but the grey right-hand strip bug seemed to affect basically every Chrome user (I wasn't even one to complain, just reading the comments from fellow Chrome users).

            For what it's worth, I wasn't affected by the bug the OP was mentioning.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chihowa ( 366380 )

          Testing phase? That's a clever idea...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        Also, the button colors are wrong. I think you meant for them to have a bubble around them. But right now "Post" and "Load All Comments" are showing as teal text on a teal background. Same with "post" "moderate" "moderator help" etc. I only found the post button by searching the page. Similarly, when posting, the buttons for "Preview" "Quote Parent" "Options" and "Cancel" look like regular links. There's no background color or button outline on them.

      • Who the fuck QAs this? This is literally the second most important function on the site, after being able to comment. How the fuck did this make it into production?

      • Just a bug. Will be back.

        The bug or the feature?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      You can get there by adding /comments to the URL. Ex:
      http://slashdot.org/~NotDrWho/... [slashdot.org]

      Also -- is the "Post" button nearly invisible for everyone else? On my browser, it is teal on teal. I only found it by searching the page.

      Also - when posting, the "buttons" for preview, quote parent, options, and cancel are just regular link text so they kinda vanish too. They need to be buttons.

  • Cheaper in Vietnam (Score:4, Insightful)

    by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @08:54AM (#49146321)
    Make sense. Chinese wages and standards of living have been increasing rapidly over the last few years, while the political systems/economies in parts of South East Asia are becoming developed enough to provide confidence to foreign investment. Will be interesting to see how China deals with this shift. Hopefully not in the western way, with all the bosses patting themselves on the back for lowering costs while the consumer economy falls apart around them.
    • Now I understand Amazon's idea of putting 3d printers on trucks. The factory of the future will be ship or container based, so it can be moved to whichever country provides the cheapest labour at any one time.
      • I hadn't heard they were interested in that, but it makes very good sense. One of the big trends in supply chain management is the "push-pull" strategy. Push strategy is when you are forecasting customer demand and trying to get your supply chain optimized to meet it. If you don't get it just right, can end up with shortages (angry customers) or overages (increased holding and order costs). Pull supply chains provide the product as the customer demands it. Sometimes that can work well (Amazon Kindle, si

    • Re:Cheaper in Vietnam (Score:4, Funny)

      by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:55AM (#49146785) Homepage

      I think it's hilarious to see China losing jobs to a low-cost foreign competitor. How does it feel, bitch?! Not only that but it's a country they used to support militarily. The suck it double bonus.

      • China might have supported Vietnam during the US war but Vietnam and China have gone to war and not just once and if you go far enough back in history you will find China and Vietnam have been enemies far longer than they've been friends. IIRC China has actually invaded and occupied vietnam several times.

        • And after the Sino-Soviet split, Vietnam was more an ally of the Soviets against China, and topped the China backed Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. They are 2 of the 4 parties in territorial disputes over islands in the South China Sea

    • The fact that China is increasingly hostile to the internal use of Western tech (promoting their own OS, banning Apple products, etc) could also be a factor, not to mention things like their anti-monopoly lawsuit against MS. And let's face it, it's not like anyone in China really *paid* for their copy of Windows anyhow.

    • Re:Cheaper in Vietnam (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @10:14AM (#49146935)

      This shows the danger of the Race To the Bottom concept.

      US/European Manufacturing cannot have dirt cheap labor, but it still isn't dead. Western Manufacturing is value add manufacturing. While you may pay more per device, your device will have a lower refund rate, or more automation on the line, where product are more constantly completed.

      However for the countries who are getting business from just being the cheapest, means once someone can be cheaper than you, then you are out of business, with a population of unskilled -semi-skilled workers out of work, and probably desperate (and that makes them dangerous) and a debt of an expensive infrastructure that hasn't been paid off yet.

      Living in upstate NY, I have seen the effect of a manufacturing losses. Where in the 1970-1980's most jobs started to get shipped overseas, because they were cheaper, and the Pre-WWII buildings and infrastructure wasn't adequate. (We can discuss politics too... However that is still open to a lot of debate). Most towns economy was dependent on one large company once that company leaves the town dies. Because the old manufacturing was only about units out. That can be pushed anywhere. Now that US Manufacturing is slowly coming back, it is about more than cost per unit, but other factors as well... And these new manufacturing are no longer so vital to the economy, that the area can survive after it.

  • It's a start... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MagickalMyst ( 1003128 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @08:57AM (#49146341)
    Now if they would only close the shop in Redmond.

  • Market Labor Forces (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Limekiller42 ( 1381683 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:04AM (#49146393)
    This shouldn't surprise anyone. If you commoditize your labor market (which means you are competing on price) you run the risk that someone else will offer a cheaper alternative. If you can't defend your position on price, you have to compete with some sort of other value add like offering skilled labor. If you can't do that, you've got a real problem.
    • Everything becomes a commodity when too much of it is produced. This goes for gadgets, fastfood, pulp fiction, and yes even American Idols and pornography.
      • It's not quantity that makes a product a commodity. Commoditization appears when the market gets to the point where there no or little differentiation in the market so competition becomes one of price. Mobile phones are created in very large quantities (Samsung, Apple, etc), but still command high prices (so high that the cost is hidden inside of subsidized mobile phone plans. We pay a lot of money for these devices). PC computers, on the other hand, are also created in large quantities and have become

  • Always a cheaper fish... (Score:3)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:05AM (#49146395) Journal
    Given that China has historically been the nominally-communist-but-attractively-cheap-and-open-for-business destination, they can't be entirely surprised that Vietnam is now cutting into their action.

    That aside, though, I wonder if this is more or less purely cost focused, or whether the quasi-mercantalist Chinese government policies aimed at aiding domestic firms and speeding up acquisition of foreign firms' tech has a bigger role? They aren't necessarily irrational, given that competing on price and low environmental standards isn't exactly a fun game, even when you are winning it; but such policies presumably do encourage foreign firms to head for the exit more quickly at the same time as they reduce the impact of their doing so.

    • "global economy" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @09:12AM (#49146435)
      At first I thought this was a story of Microsoft heralding a broadsword by bringing their interests home.

      As it tuns out, even the repressed have it bad in the 'global economy'.

      Here it is folks, the wealthy rule the earth.
      • I'm not saying that you are wrong, but that's the way repression works. It's a bad thing no matter what economic model you are being repressed in, but it can be...and has been...a whole lost worse for Chinese laborer. China is still much better off in the global economy than what they had before they entered as a player in the global market. Remember it was't all that long ago when Chinese were starving to death by the millions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Limekiller42 ( 1381683 )
      It's likely a cost-play. If you build your economy on the concept of commoditized labor (where you are just competing with others on price rather than other value adds), you run this risk which is that others will offer that commodity cheaper. As China's living standards move up, the wages are moving with it and that is causing a problem for the Chinese leadership. They also have a massive real estate bubble that could wreck their own economy pretty badly and also have a pretty painful global impact.

    • Well, it's kind of too late for Microsoft. The locals has already learned and adapted. Cost will be lower in Vietnam but will cost for Microsoft in Vietnam be lower than the cost for Xiaomi in China? China is Xiaomi's domestic market and unlike our government, the Chinese government actual cares about keeping its citizens employed and earning a living. Sure, it's not a great living for most, but it is improving.

      It's sad to see communist authoritarians beating the capitalist democrats in the world econo

    • Well, China has been playing games with taxes and regulation a bit lately and a properly outfitted labor camp anywhere convenient in China has become exorbitantly costly. I think Made in Vietnam is just a stopgap. Myanmar next? The day when major corporations own and operate their own countries is not too far off. Pesky governments always wanting their cut and all....

  • Personally, I expected an India closure. (Score:3)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Friday February 27, 2015 @02:31PM (#49148995)

    Personally, I expected an India closure.

    Especially after India "discovered" Nokia "owed" $3.4B in "taxes", as soon as they heard Nokia was being sold to Microsoft.

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