Apple is ramping up the production of iPhones, iPads, Macs and other products outside of China, Nikkei Asia reports on Wednesday, in a sign that the Cupertino Colossus is continuing to accelerate its production diversification efforts.
Sources said iPad production will begin in Vietnam as early as the middle of this year, marking the first time that the world’s biggest tablet maker will build a significant number of the devices outside of China. The California tech giant is also stepping up iPhone production in India, its second-largest production base for the iconic device, sources added, with plans to start producing the latest iPhone 12 series — the company’s first 5G smartphones — there as soon as this quarter.
Apple is also increasing production capacity for smart speakers, earphones and computers in Southeast Asia as part of its ongoing diversification strategy, the sources added.
Apple has relocated some production of the Mac mini, one of its desktop computers, to Malaysia, another person familiar with the matter told Nikkei, and the company is also set to move a part of its MacBook production to Vietnam this year.
Apple’s moves are part of a larger trend of global tech giants reducing their production dependence on China, long known as the world’s factory. The country’s rising labor costs, the prolonged trade tensions between Washington and Beijing and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic that severely disrupted the supply chain have all driven home the risks of depending too heavily on one country. The U.S. government, moreover, has initiated a “supply chain restructuring” campaign and urged tech suppliers to move away from China, the Nikkei reported earlier.
MacDailyNews Take: Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who opened relations with China in the early 1970’s, just before his death in 1994 remarked on China: We may have created a Frankenstein.
Apple cannot divest their dependence on China quickly enough (because they started years too late).
It’s smart for both Apple and Foxconn to diversify assembly outside of China. There’s no sense having all of your eggs in one basket. — MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019