Apple

Apple product is deign in California and made in china. Is an "extremely important market" for the company and it will continue to look at how to grow its presence in the country? However, China is not simply seen as a potential growth market for Apple products. The country often is regarded as the company's main production base. Just after a horrific rash of worker suicides at the Foxconn factory complex outside of Hong Kong in 2010, a monologist named Mike Daisey launched a one-man show called "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”.
If Apple can cut costs by having machines made in China then that is up to Apple. If China can make Apple machines to the quality that people around the world expect from Apple then many people in China will have much work to do. It is not just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products. Who attempted to capture value in global networks by using Apple's iPad and iPhone as research examples - shows that only about "$10 or less in direct labor wages that go into an iPhone or iPad is paid to Chinese workers". Most of them live in dormitories on the site of the factory. They work six days a week, 12 hours a day. They earn the equivalent of 17 US dollars a day, and they are plum jobs in China. Now, one example is cited of what can be done in China that cannot happen in America.
Apple has become one of the best known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days.
Since Apple products have become so integrated into our everyday lives, the friendly, quotidian feeling of plugging in an iMac or fiddling with an iPad makes it difficult to imagine the ethically gruesome past that brought them to our fingertips. A scorching article from The New York Times last Wednesday has exposed this past, rendering the public conscience of labor rights violations, which surfaced after an explosion at the Apple construction plant in Chengdu, China. The gory mental picture of building A5’s explosion paired with the records of negligence on Apple’s part has cast a dark shadow on the international corporation. Yet the media's delay in reacting to this Apple public relations nightmare further reminds us that Apple has likely reached a place on the corporate pedestal where it can emerge with its sales unfettered from these reputation-tarnishing events. It took a major, culminating event for the information on the labor law violations to garner enough media attention. Nevertheless, the sluggish media response harkens back to the ignored cries for help that shaped the American worker's revolution after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It is unlikely that Apple sales will take a hit now that the information has surfaced. Nevertheless, the frightening historical parallels serve as a reminder that the ethical operations of the largest and most trusted American corporations still need to be kept under surveillance, particularly in their international outposts. According to the New York Times report, employees had been working excessive hours with sub-par, dangerous living and working conditions. Yet international law and the Alien Tort Statute still do not hold corporations liable for international crimes. Even if the media is comfortable pointing the finger at corporations, the concrete ramifications of situations like Apple's are still limited.
Liker doesn’t buy the claim that U.S. workers don’t have the skills or the flexibility to make Apple products. Any manufacturer opening a new plant has to do some training, he says.
He gave three main reasons why he believes Apple won’t build in America.
• Cheap labor. Apple executives may not want to admit it, but Liker says one of the biggest advantages of going overseas is that workers there are much, much cheaper. This is really an obvious reason, and we all know it. But it’s worth remembering whenever someone tries to claim that the actual reason is because our workers don’t have the right skills. “Right now is the worst time to make that statement since the recession has put so many people out of work,” Liker says. “There are all kinds of skilled workers right now.”
• Taxes. Liker says another big reason Apple and other manufacturers do work in Asia is because taxes are cheaper there. Usually, if a company makes profits from something built overseas, they have to pay American taxes when they “repatriate” those profits back to their headquarters here. But if a company spends money at lots of overseas factories, it just re-invests the profits over there, and it never pays the higher tax. Liker estimates this could make a 20-30 percent difference in profits for a company like Apple.
• They’re there because they’re there. Once the decision to make products overseas has been made, it becomes incredibly difficult to reverse, Liker says. “Apple is not a manufacturing company,” he says. “They’re a design and marketing company.” All of Apple’s manufacturing plants in Asia are owned by suppliers, not by Apple. If Apple executives suddenly decided they wanted their products built in the U.S., they’d have to invest billions of dollars in new factories. In China, the infrastructure is already there. “They made that decision decades ago,” Liker says. “I don’t think they’re revisiting it.”
There’s another wrinkle to this discussion that Liker says is worth mentioning. Right now, he says China actually has a far greater shortage of skilled workers than the U.S. Demand for workers in China is so high that factories there have trouble holding on to people. Liker says turnover rates of 20-30 percent are common in Chinese factories.
So, according to Liker, the truth is the exact opposite of what Apple claims.