Apple allegedly trying to shift supply chain outside China

[Cmaier]

Apple talks to suppliers to increase manufacturing efforts outside of China | AppleInsider

Apple is intending to decrease its reliance on suppliers working in China, a report claims, with the iPhone maker telling some contract manufacturers it wants to expand production outside of the country.

appleinsider.com

If true, this would be a good thing. And given world events, and that Tim Cook isn’t an idiot, I’m sure it’s true.

 

[Citysnaps]

It will be interesting to see how that pans out over time. And how much time will be needed. I suspect that will need to be implemented across many countries as the scope of China's manufacturing infrastructure is unique and exists nowhere else. Managing JIT inventory, assembling, testing, QA, and fulfilling/shipping 600,000+ iPhones per day (on the average) every day of the year with the ability to instantly ramp that number up and down with demand, is pretty amazing.

 

[ronntaylor]

Too bad some of it can't be done by machines here in North America, especially the US. Would save on shipping, timing would be better and the possibility of technological thievery would be lessened somewhat.

 

[Cmaier]

Too bad some of it can't be done by machines here in North America, especially the US. Would save on shipping, timing would be better and the possibility of technological thievery would be lessened somewhat.

Doesn‘t really save on shipping given that most of Apple’s sales aren‘t in the US. The world is a big place, It is in apple‘s best interest to diversify its supply chains so as to not be too dependent on any one country or region.

 

[ronntaylor]

Doesn‘t really save on shipping given that most of Apple’s sales aren‘t in the US. The world is a big place, It is in apple‘s best interest to diversify its supply chains so as to not be too dependent on any one country or region.

IIRC, the US accounts for at least a third of Apple's revenue. That's significant enough, especially if you add in the other nations for the Americas (and I guess the Caribbean). Although I guess it would take forever to make a big enough impact with all the suppliers and workers still in China. Apple will not sacrifice profits to get the machinery and workers up and running here. Even if Apple did, not sure where at the point where the machinery is capable yet.

 

[Cmaier]

IIRC, the US accounts for at least a third of Apple's revenue. That's significant enough, especially if you add in the other nations for the Americas (and I guess the Caribbean). Although I guess it would take forever to make a big enough impact with all the suppliers and workers still in China. Apple will not sacrifice profits to get the machinery and workers up and running here. Even if Apple did, not sure where at the point where the machinery is capable yet.

The tooling investment would be gargantuan. Not practical yet to do it all with robots. But, more importantly, the assembly is a small part of the overall manufacturing. All the parts need to be made. And they are made in other countries (Mostly).

You point out that 30-40% of Apple‘s revenue is in the U.S. But a lot of the parts in apple products also go into products made by other companies, who sell stuff all over the world, and who manufacture mostly in asia. If Samsung, LG, Huawei, HP, etc. etc. all assemble final products in asia, it‘s not easy to convince suppliers to move to the U.S., unless Apple pays for the factories.

 

[ouimetnick]

I remember that less than 10 years ago that some iMacs were "Assembled in USA" in addition to China. Not sure if that was on the BTO machines and the "Assembled" part meant slapping in a certain size HDD and RAM. My half brother ordered a custom iMac with 16GB of memory, 512GB SSD on April 9th, etc and it was suppose to arrive May 16th. It's now estimated to be late July. Thought it was just MacBook Pro models. Timmy needs to either gtfo of China or have multiple manufacturing plants elsewhere.

My MBP 14 was ordered in November and arrived late January (understandable due to the chip shortage), but this zero tolerance covid policy is absurd. Honestly if I was locked in my house with little food and supplies, I'd go crazy (might already be)

 

[Cmaier]

I remember that less than 10 years ago that some iMacs were "Assembled in USA" in addition to China. Not sure if that was on the BTO machines and the "Assembled" part meant slapping in a certain size HDD and RAM. My half brother ordered a custom iMac with 16GB of memory, 512GB SSD on April 9th, etc and it was suppose to arrive May 16th. It's now estimated to be late July. Thought it was just MacBook Pro models. Timmy needs to either gtfo of China or have multiple manufacturing plants elsewhere.

My MBP 14 was ordered in November and arrived late January (understandable due to the chip shortage), but this zero tolerance covid policy is absurd. Honestly if I was locked in my house with little food and supplies, I'd go crazy (might already be)

I thought it was the trashcan mac pros that were assembled in the US? Maybe the iMac Pros, too, but I don‘t remember that.

 

[Citysnaps]

I thought it was the trashcan mac pros that were assembled in the US?

Yes by Flex (formerly Flextronics) in Texas. The 2019 Mac Pros as well.

 

[Colstan]

Yes by Flex (formerly Flextronics) in Texas. The 2019 Mac Pros as well.

I recall one of the problems with assembling the Mac Pro inside the U.S. was that there simply aren't certain parts available outside of China. In this case, a very specific type of screw had to be imported before assembly could begin. Even if Apple begins to diversity its supply chain, there are some things that can't be easily found outside the People's Republic, due to the scale at which China can produce disparate parts. Also, even though Apple uses a number of proprietary parts, many others are commodities, also used by their competitors. Moving that production out of China would require them to convince Lenovo, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, HP, Asus, etc. to also move production elsewhere. So, this is going to be a chronic problem with the CCP's authoritarian policies and China itself being a choke point in the supply chain. Apple may be able to alleviate some of that, such as production issues with the MacBook Pro in Shanghai due to the quixotic no-COVID policy, but there's only so much that can be done, even if Tim Cook is really good at this.

 

[Citysnaps]

I recall one of the problems with assembling the Mac Pro inside the U.S. was that there simply aren't certain parts available outside of China. In this case, a very specific type of screw had to be imported before assembly could begin. Even if Apple begins to diversity its supply chain, there are some things that can't be easily found outside the People's Republic, due to the scale at which China can produce disparate parts. Also, even though Apple uses a number of proprietary parts, many others are commodities, also used by their competitors. Moving that production out of China would require them to convince Lenovo, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, HP, Asus, etc. to also move production elsewhere. So, this is going to be a chronic problem with the CCP's authoritarian policies and China itself being a choke point in the supply chain. Apple may be able to alleviate some of that, such as production issues with the MacBook Pro in Shanghai due to the quixotic no-COVID policy, but there's only so much that can be done, even if Tim Cook is really good at this.

That aligns with my recollection that Apple negotiated with the US government to have import tariffs lifted for parts imported from China in exchange for setting up manufacturing in the US.

 

[Huntn]

Apple talks to suppliers to increase manufacturing efforts outside of China | AppleInsider

Apple is intending to decrease its reliance on suppliers working in China, a report claims, with the iPhone maker telling some contract manufacturers it wants to expand production outside of the country.

appleinsider.com

If true, this would be a good thing. And given world events, and that Tim Cook isn’t an idiot, I’m sure it’s true.

About f**king time.