r those of you using apple products . specially iphone and ipad would have noticed the following t? "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.". So why exactly does ipad and iphone cannot be made in US, is it the cost of production, the costs of labor in US that makes it difficult to made iphones in US.. Why cant apple 's iPhones, iPads, and all the rest of Apple's magic gadgets be built in the States?
The real story of why this cant be done ... will be a revelation .. and its also a sad comment how America have been loosing its " manufacturing base" and we are no longer producing the kind of people " with the required skills "
The New York Times asked that question, and after an extremely well-researched report involving interviews with both former and current executives at Apple, the answer the Times found is both simple and chilling: iPhones aren't made in America because they just can't be, not because of manufacturing costs and other hyperbole . The infrastructure and labor force that apple needs to manufacture iphones and ipads doesn't exist at any levels in US , which is necessary to support Apple's operations -- in fact its not even close to China...
- The Chinese factory where most iPhones reach final assembly employs 230,000 workers. Compare this with US: how many cities in the US have a population higher than that, ( according to SIRI the answer was a mere 83 cities )-- and that's total population, not workforce. With an average labor force of around 65 percent of the population, only 50 US cities are large enough to provide that kind of labor pool... and even in the biggest US city of them all, New York, 230,000 people still amounts to almost three percent of the city's entire population.
- One of apple's biggest supplier Foxconn has over 60,000 people living and working at the factory. Many of the people at "Foxconn City" work six days a week, twelve hours a day.. In US you just cannot do that .Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States, less than a fifth the number of contractor employees assembling iPhones at one Chinese factory
- Even though the 200,000 assembly-line workers putting part A into slot B could potentially be classified as unskilled labor, the 8700 industrial engineers overseeing the process are highly skilled -- and according to the nytimes Times, finding that many qualified engineers in the States would take 9 months . Chinese manufacturers found them all in 15 days..In US the demand and supply gap between engineers who graduates every year is appalling .
So the reason of iphone being manufactured is not " a merely" manufaturing cost issue,, Instead, it's about who can build manufacture the greatest number of iPhones within the shortest period of time, all while remaining flexible and instantaneously adaptable to Apple's needs.
