“Apple CEO Tim Cook made headlines last December when he announced in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that Apple would be making a product in the US this year,” Carl Franzen reports for The Verge. “That product turned out to be the bold, new, trashcan-shaped Mac Pro, first unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June.”
“In fact, Apple kicked off WWDC with an emotional animated video that ended with the phrase ‘designed by Apple in California,’ which has appeared on Apple devices for years.,” Franzen reports. “But the company is clearly emphasizing its home state more now than ever before. Going forward, new versions of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system will take the names of places in California, beginning with the latest, 10.9 Mavericks, due to hit this fall. And ‘designed by Apple in California’ is now the leading slogan for a new marketing campaign used in Apple video and print ads.”
Franzen reports, “‘There’s no doubt that ‘Made in America’ advertising is effective,’ said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a nonprofit trade group founded in 2007 to represent steelworkers and other US industrial laborers. ‘It’s not limited to tech gadgets.’ To his point, a recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that 80 percent of 5,000 consumers were willing to pay more for products made in America, including electronics. The same study found Chinese consumers were also willing to pay more for American-made products… For now, manufacturing in the US is more expensive than going abroad. But the situation is rapidly changing, and if current trends continue, by 2015, manufacturing costs in China will be on par with the US, according to one forecast by AlixPartners, a global business advisory firm.”
Much more in the full article here.
