It's interesting that he attributes not manufacturing in the US to lack of skills rather than cost - having worked on a PC assembly line in the past I can tell you that you can pick up all the basic skills in under a day and be pretty efficient in less than a couple of weeks. (Although it could be that they're doing something more sophisticated than assembly...)

Nevertheless, I can certainly see the logic in the decision - it shifts manufacturing nearer to (a large segment of) the consumer base and some of the component supply.

10 hours ago, elmer wrote

For a company that values secrecy and new product impact so highly, perhaps Apple are re-evaluating the total cost of reduced IP control, that comes with outsourcing. Just the other day, blogs were showing photos of a supposed iPhone 5s back-shell which, if real, could only have come from the outsourcing plant working on it.

And it's not just the secrecy. If people start thinking that an iPhone5s is just around the corner, then sales of the iPhone5 will dry up.

26 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

What would the iPad cost when manufactured in the US?

Depends how they do it.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1990/02/26/73121/index.htm

I think they've got a lot more manufacturing R&D to do before they're ready to build the iPads in the US.

5 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

What would the iPad cost when manufactured in the US?

I think Apple could lower the markup a bit. What is it now, 800%?

21 minutes ago, spivonious wrote

*snip*

I think Apple could lower the markup a bit. What is it now, 800%?

It's reckoned to be about 50%, but there's no way of knowing for sure because no one knows what kind of deals Apple gets on buying components in such large quantities.

Seems like rougly $400,- more expensive,..

They don't cost extra.

LOL, ofcourse they don't 'cost extra'. They could be manifactured cheaper. But I don't think the PC price would benefit from the added shipping costs. The reason why Apple can outsource, all their products are the same. With a DELL you can select so many different configurations, that the added shipping costs outweigh the benefits of outsourcing.

Of course, in the UK, we also benefit from open borders with a cheap eastern European labour force...

25 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@JohnAskew:

LOL, ofcourse they don't 'cost extra'. They could be manifactured cheaper. But I don't think the PC price would benefit from the added shipping costs. The reason why Apple can outsource, all their products are the same. With a DELL you can select so many different configurations, that the added shipping costs outweigh the benefits of outsourcing.

So you're saying Apple intends to raise their prices for iWhatever by $400 ?

Do you think that's the type of thinking that made Apple into the largest corporation ever?

Lump your +$400 statement into "the sky is falling" mantra that's in your bag of conservative talking points.

I imagine, in the medium-term future, as globalisation takes off and geographically related inequality subsides we'll see manufacturing become distributed among the consumer bases (i.e. rather than shipping devices around the world from a factory in China they'll have many smaller factories in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and so on).

9 hours ago, gcorcoran wrote

I doubt american children are willing to work over 40 hours a week.

With children, you don't have to ask.  You can leverage their smaller size and lack of power against them.

8 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

I don't think it's just the low wages that helps Apple keep their costs and pricing down. It's because everything is built in the same area, or at least close by. Screens, brackets, drives, chips, screws...the transportation costs are low because they're all done close by. If you have screws built in Russia, brackets built in Dubai, screens built in Kyoto, cases built in Idaho...the prices go up because of the supply lines.

That's Tim Cook's point - everything isn't made in the same area...

16 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/how-much-would-the-ipad-2-cost-if-it-were-made-in-the-us-about-1-140/238508/

Seems like rougly $400,- more expensive,..

You and the article's author are assuming the labour costs involved. Apple will most likely leverage its experience in manufacturing automation to keep cost down. 

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234477/A_U.S._Apple_factory_may_be_robot_city

14 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

That's Tim Cook's point - everything isn't made in the same area...

Yup.  Quite a lot of their ancillary components are made in the US then shipped to China for assembly. 

6 hours ago, Bass wrote

Apple is such a huge company that investing in industrial automation might make some sense. Every time they use Foxxconn or the like to "contract" out their manufacturing, they piss away some of their profit..

It would make a whole lot of sense. And once they have the systems in place then I can see them handling all the manufacturing themselves. All the equipment and machinery used by Foxconn, Sharp etc. to build iGadgets is already owned by Apple (which is why they get snippy if their manufacturing partners use the machines to build laptops for competitors). So all that Apple is really paying for is the cheap labour. If the labour isn't needed…

Apple has taken a lot of flak for 'supporting slave labour'. I wonder what the petitioners will say when Apple stops 'supporting' it and puts thousands of ChInese out of work. 

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/12/06/apple-to-bring-mac-manufacturing-back-to-u-s-ceo-tim-cook-says/

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Data-Central/HP-PCs-Manufactured-in-the-USA/ba-p/127945