“Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) reportedly plans to establish manufacturing plants in the US and is currently conducting evaluations in cities such as Detroit and Los Angeles, according to market watchers,” Ninelu Tu and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes. “Since the manufacturing of Apple’s products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.”
Tu and Tsai report, “Meanwhile, Foxconn chairman Terry Guo, at a recent public event, noted that the company is planning a training program for US-based engineers… [to provide] an environment to learn the Chinese language, first-hand expereince in the manufacturing process, and a training… Foxconn is already in discussion with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) over such a program, Gou disclosed.”
Read more in the full article here.
I wonder how the pols will receive this news? Manufacturing in the US…by a Chinese (technically, Taiwanese) company.
Apple has no excuse if they built in the US, Samdung already has fab plant here Apple where are you?
Apple doesn’t manufacture anything. At all. They are not in the manufacturing business.
That Samsung plant in Texas reportedly makes chips for Apple.
With 134 billion dollars by Jan 2013, you are in any business you want to be in. If the companies Apple gets screens, cpu’s, and casings from continue to become more unreliable then what? go out of business? Sharp, Samdung, LG, and Intel will ultimately make the decision for Apple.
Republicans have long loved Taiwan. That’s why his own party was so upset with Nixon when he went to China.
Right. Because Republicans believe Taiwan should be its own sovereign state and that we should publicly declare as much. I would say Democrats believe the first part as well, but not the second.
I can’t imagine they will pay much… but, hey they are jobs!
If they build the plants on the USA/Mexico border they can have cheap labor and solve the illegal immigrant problem at the same time.
“Since the manufacturing of Apple’s products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.”
That is a sad commentary on the expertise of US manufacturing.
I read that differently. I read it to mean that FoxConn would not try to bring manufacturing jobs that are manual labor intensive (such as the long line of people you see on a manufacturing line in FoxConn photos performing menial, repetitive tasks) which would be cost prohibitive in the US given the wage differential. As Steve Jobs told Obama, “those jobs aren’t coming back.” What we want and need are higher skill, higher paying jobs.
There are areas (such as aerospace and microchips) where there is still tremendous expertise in US manufacturing.
Which microchips are made in the US?
Intel has several chip plants doing the latest technology in Oregon near my brother in Beaverton area and New Mexico if I remember right.
@Brian “I read that differently”. Thanks for your point of view. I also read it from the “negative” point of view, but after reading your opinion I think you are right, and more importantly, you just gave me a good feeling of hope.
Thanks.
I don’t think it has anything to do with our manufacturing ability. I mean look at the aircraft industry – highly complex machines that require very tight tolerances and we make many of them right here in the USA.
I think it has more to do with finding enough people who would work for the low wages these jobs offer.
It will be highly educated people and a lot of semi-automatic and automated manufacturing, with few low level employees who do minimal skill jobs.
Even warehouse operations are automated in lots of places.
These types of high tech manufacturing offer educated persons a source of work that we need and need more of to keep up and compete in the world.
There is no other way, unless you accept going the way of Rome and the English Empire where people sit around and watch the collapse rather than creating new and better products.
Agreed though its the British Empire. Sadly listening to many on your side of the pond reminds me so much of Britain in the sixties so beware. Which is why it worries me so much that a company like Apple engenders so much suspicion in Wall Street while old outdated plodders gain so much leeway.
Makes sense, hope it happens.
What about Samsung, which already has a plant in Texas?
OTOH, “bringing those jobs back to the US” is what Foxconn seems to be doing…
Samsung bought that plant from Freescale, an offshoot of the joint venture between Motorola, IBM & Apple which created the CPUs for PowerPc macs. Those jobs were always there.
Something they would probably have been pressure to NOT do if China had been called a “currency manipulator”
Ridiculous mind fart, domed to failure,
Why yes, yes you are…
I will only work there if they install suicide nets.