“Foxconn, the company that assembles the bulk of the world’s iPhones, is in preliminary talks to build a factory in northern China that would make high-end screens for the phones as well, in a sign of the company’s ambition to move up the electronics food chain,” Lorraine Luk reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is discussing a possible investment with the government of Zhengzhou, about 750 kilometers south of Beijing, according to people familiar with the talks,” Luk reports. “The two sides are discussing terms such as how to divide the investment, which could reach as much as 35 billion yuan ($5.7 billion), the people said.”
‘It remains unclear whether Apple Inc. — which relies on Foxconn to make the majority of its iPhones — or other investors are being approached to invest in the display plant. Currently, Apple uses screens made by suppliers in South Korea and Japan,” Luk reports. “For Apple, buying displays from Foxconn would help the company diversify its screen suppliers beyond Japan’s Sharp Corp. and Japan Display Inc. and South Korea’s LG Display Co. ‘Foxconn hopes to capture the growing demand for high-resolution, energy-efficient displays and supply Apple and other smartphone makers in the next few years,’ said a person familiar with the situation.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
I don’t understand why an American company CANNOT build the same factory here.
Correction: An outsourced China company manufacturing products for an American company.
Bring it home, Apple …
What is the point to manufacture in USA displays only to ship them ten thousand kilometres away to China where almost everything else is manufactured and assembled?
I get your point and can’t argue with the common sense.
However, my point is American (jobs) not making American products should be a CRIME.
It’s simple really. Remove the minimum wage. I know, sounds terrible on the surface.
But if you want those assembly line jobs, plus the higher wage jobs of building the factories, supplying the equipment, maintaining the equipment, planning and managing the facility, providing the infrastructure to support all those new (to America) factories, then…
Get rid of it. Otherwise, you’re just whispering in the wind.
Yes, I too want to live in an America where desperate poverty is as bad as it can be in China. Let’s race to the bottom! #sarcasm
Is your sarcastic statement based upon emotion or facts on the ground? I question whether you’re seeing the economic picture very clearly as “racing to the bottom” is a rather odd and contrary description of what has been happening in China over the last quarter century. Before the economic changes took place under Deng Xiaoping the Chinese were feeling true “desperate poverty” as you describe. Those factory line workers took those jobs to escape desperate poverty.
Did you know that today China has a large middle class that is comparable in size using absolute numbers to that of the U.S. middle class? That Chinese middle class is as rich as its U.S. counterpart. That statistic alone should shock you. So think long and hard about how and why that happened. Even if you believe those relatively low wage factory line jobs are not terribly desirable in the U.S., you’re missing the much larger picture. Each one of those low wage jobs will also require higher wage jobs as I described in my first post.
In the 80s and 90s people whined about the “hollowing out of America” as those type of jobs left the country in droves for Japan, Korea and ultimately China. It’s very sad for the U.S. because that never needed to happen. (Japan is another story because they were simply better than their U.S. counterparts at the time. Thankfully the U.S. woke up.)
Let me leave you with this last thought. Imagine that all those factories in China had been built and staffed in the U.S. instead. Imagine the infrastructure that would have been built to support those factories and the workers (both low and high wage). Imagine how much bigger existing businesses would have been that supported that infrastructure. Imagine that entire new markets would have been developed to cater to the large numbers of assembly line workers with inexpensive food, health care and housing, because if there’s a way to make a buck filling a need some enterprising individual will find it. Imagine what kind of tax base the U.S. would have.
That is the grand opportunity lost for the misguided want on a minimum wage. Sadly, the U.S. still has its share of the desperately poor. The minimum wage hasn’t fixed that. Don’t you wonder why?
While I agree it would be nice to build the phones here – where are you going to find that many employees in one place let alone ones that will work for low wages? I heard that that are something like 15 to 20,000 employees there.
It was about 1 Million workers in 2012
http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/12/1-million-robots-to-replace-1-million-human-jobs-at-foxconn-first-robots-have-arrived/
My bad myopic view, I know.
Answer to your question. Steve Jobs said those jobs are not coming back. Apple is just like any other company currently NOT MADE IN THE USA.
Whatever the reason, painfully obvious the largest company in the history of the planet cannot manufacture products and tout — MADE IN THE USA.
Sad …
Apple assembles iMacs and Mac Pros in USA. Also, Gorilla Glass for Apple products is made in USA. Finally, all Samsung-manufactured SoCs up to A7 for iPods, including iPod touch, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, iPad Air come from USA. Not bad at all; but expanding already makes no sense.
Mighty fine.
Please submit the percentage numbers of ALL APPLE PRODUCTS provided in the USA and outside the USA.
Then we will talk …
‘Provided’ should be PRODUCED. So sorry … 🙂
Is is coming back, just as soon as they figure out how to get the robots to do all the work.
Build a factory? No problem. Staff it? BIG problem.
-jcr
Well, all we have do is spend more money on education and problem solved.
/s
You are a moron.
How so, juvenile name caller?
Educating people to assemble iPhones takes less than a week. The problem, moron, is that there aren’t enough people by about 950,000 in one place in the U.S. who would be willing to do the job. The only people uneducated enough who’d normally do such jobs collect more from the U.S. Nanny welfare state than a product assembly factory would pay them. These jobs that nobody in the U.S. wants to do will all be robotic within 60 months anyway. The concept of low educated factory workers in the U.S. is dead. As Steve Jobs had to tell that idiot golfer that a bunch of morons and dead people put in the White House: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
I agree with everything you have said with one notable exception. I am NOT a moron!
I understand the staffing problem. One would guess the millions out of work and combined unemployed no longer looking for work would easily fill the slots. Also, if work requirements were BUILT into welfare, in some cases that would make sense, again, problem solved?
Well if they can’t make sapphire at a profit it’s difficult to see them making ‘cheap’ glass.
U-N-I-O-N. does that answer your question?
Yup.
That went so well with sapphire components.
American workers don’t have the highly technical skills needed to make iPhones. But look at it this way, through all those cuts to education, infrastructure and social safety nets, we were able to give enormous tax breaks to billionaires. And, frankly, they are the only ones who matter. #sarcasm
That plant needs to be built in the US. No workers can beat US workers.
I really wish that was true…
And just then you woke up …