“It’s life-cycle week at Industry Focus! In this week’s tech episode, Dylan Lewis and Evan Niu go over the steps it takes to get an iPhone from the factory to your hand. Listen in as we explain where a few of the most important iPhone parts come from, why Apple has shifted to the contract manufacturing model thanks to Tim Cook, and some of the pros and cons of that approach,” Evan Niu writes for The Motley Fool.
A snippet from the transcript: Tim Cook absolutely hates inventory. Setting up this model and supply chain, I’ve read reports where other industry executives look at Apple’s supply chain and they’re just blown away. They’re like, “Well, we can’t compete with this.” You can order a custom-built Apple device like a Mac, or an iPhone or something. You’ll get the tracking information and it literally ships from the factory to your doorstep, in a matter of days. They build it and they ship it directly to you. That’s the kind of scenario when the purchase transaction goes like that. I mean, Apple does very little hands-on. Apple’s not physically handling the product too much if you’re ordering like that, and that’s kind of a testament, because they still get to book all the revenue and the sales. — Evan Niu
Full transcript and audio in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Niu gets it.