Goldman writes, “Google’s new Nexus One isn’t in China just yet, but Motorola has already announced plans for Android phones on both China Mobile and China Unicom coming in a few months; Samsung also has Android phones launching in China. It stands to reason that if Google angers the Chinese political machine enough, that machine might sanction anything with Google’s fingerprints on it. Is it realistic to think that China could issue some kinds of access restrictions on phones running software from Google? Absolutely, say the experts I’m talking to.”
Goldman writes, “Google can afford to turn its back on the Chinese market because it has very little to lose. In doing so, it’s not all bad news. Apple and the iPhone, Research in Motion and its Blackberry, might end up enjoying market share no one anticipated.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Surely, that’s not the way Apple would want to “beat” Google in China. And RIM’s BlackBerry is outmoded tech.
So, does that mean a Google search option will not exist on iPhones in China?
Commies that love the capitalist life.
I understand the the Chinese are trying to get the black market iPhones to get away from the government mandated stripped down iPhones that cost more that the black market iPhones.
Did the Chinese government restrict the WiFi in the Blackberries or they just knew that know one really used them to surf. However, I hear that the Blackberries are easy to make phone calls with.
What vapid analysis…
Then if Google is the worldwide champion of freedom that makes Apple evil/uncaring/greedy and sales would plummet (I think not though because peole are all talk when it comes to morals and consumerism. iPods could be made from baby seal bones made by child slaves and people will still buy them because they are the best).
Only if Apple takes all manufacturing out of PRC could this be good for Apple ( from a political/p.r. angle).
Okay, saying that Google standing up to a repressive regime is “Good for Apple” is pretty low. I hope Apple follows their lead and pushes for more openness in China as well.
I respect Google more for this decision, and any of you out there have an insane case of google-phobia should take this as an example of how a powerful company can do good/
The Google Bear speaks.
If push comes to shove, I suppose Apple could pull manufacturing out of China, but they would take a big hit. But I wonder how Apple sales would fare if the label Made in America was on Macs, . . . even with a higher price.
@AppleJack
I would not hesitate in buying an Apple product that is made in America, regardless of the higher price.
RIM’s BlackBerry is outmoded tech.
Which bets the no-tech currently in place in China.
There is a history of Western companies selling less-than-cutting-edge technology in China, and the Chinese snapping it up because it is so much better than what the already had.
Just saying…
No no no. This would be PR suicide. Apple would gain China, but Google would make sure the story never died.
Google is right on this issue, and Apple and everyone else should fall in line behind them.
I for one am sick and tired of having our Intellectual Property ripped off and cyber stealing of IP secrets by China. China is using the greed of the western world against it as it plays one huge company against another to get what they want, and steal everything else they need. There’s no free trade in China, and you will never see the business they have stolen from the USA and other countries ever come out. There’s no technology sharing from China to the rest of the world, only the world to China.
Personally, I’d love to see Apple spend some of those billions on bringing some of that manufacturing process back to the US. The “entire widget” would be impossible for a single company anymore, but body machining and assembly could be done here. They could also team up with TI or Freescale to build a plant for fabricating their own ARM SoC as well.
I would prefer if Apple follows Google out of China.
Doing business with China: Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas…
The Chinese administration is just looking after chinese interests – much like the american administrations of years gone by. Just more ruthlessly and more corruptly…
An average wage of a Chinese factory worker comes out to no more than a few hundred US dollars monthly. In order to sustain a living in the US, even the most unskilled factory floor labourer needs to make at least five times as much. Let us not forget the labour laws in the US (union limits on hours worked per week, paid days off, health insurance contributions, etc).
Would anyone here be willing to pay $5,000 US for a white MacBook that was made in the US?
If the Chinese government wants to hack into its own people’s lives, what better way than to study and leverage Google’s open source Android code and unrestricted app market?
BTW, MDN – any more risque EVONY ads on your site and it’d be in jeopardy of being banned from work.
“I would not hesitate in buying an Apple product that is made in America, regardless of the higher price.”
I suppose they have looked at what it would cost to do it, but I would like to have someone look at it harder!
Like anything else, it would depend on how much higher. If the buyers can be shown the total economic flow through benefits of it. And the benefits need to be economically real, not symbolic. We have way too much symbolism recently.
There’s an unpleasant stench of xenophobic arrogance wafting around these boards.
Last night on Leno, people couldn’t recognize the current or past VP of the US. They confused the Premier of North Korea with an American Idol contestant. And other examples abound, e.g.,
America took nearly a hundred and fifty years before it let women vote and another 40 before all it’s men were given the same entitlement, and China just celebrated its 50th Anniversary.
And then we have people here who profess to be political experts yet who probably couldn’t point China out on a map.
We all live in glass houses. Thus we all shouldn’t be throw stones.
Turning a fight against human rights into a marketing opportunity?… That Jim Goldman is a real dick!
China has come a long way in the last 50 years. The Chinese people have more freedoms than ever before. They are not brain washed little followers of Mao any more.
China is a capitalist country with a shitty government. Not unlike the USA, from time to time, in that respect.
@ MDmac
I wet myself, thanks a bunch!
Greetings from Holland (capital city of North-Kobenhävn-South)
“The Chinese people have more freedoms than ever before. They are not brain washed little followers of Mao any more.”
They aren’t brainwashed little followers of Mao anymore, because they are ordered not to be.
We’ve seen cost of components for every Mac and iPhone. However all these things we love to use are manufactured in a more or less automated process by machines. I very much doubt that much of a Mac is touched by human hands. It would be interesting to know an approximate cost for labor during manufacture, that is. Because design is a completely different ballgame, that’s where labor cost is high.
So do anybody have a clue of the labor cost? It will not be as high as Predrag thinks, 5000 no way!
I have to point out that very few of the editorials about Google’s GOOD DEED have any sense of sanity. Instead they point out the BIZNIZZ aspects of the situation and almost entirely ignore the MORAL aspects of China’s insistent ABUSE of their own citizens.
How incredibly sad that these days we are going blind to the fact that biznizz is MEANINGLESS in an IMMORAL world. Let’s get back on track making our human world a BETTER PLACE as opposed to a place where we only worry about where the next buck, however DIRTY, is coming from.
Personally I’d like to see the entire rest of the world PULL OUT OF CHINA and leave them to their self-made COMMIE CATASTROPHE. It makes me sick that a single dollar of US money is sent to that deliberately criminal, totalitarian regime. I hope APPLE is listening.