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Google On-shores Manufacturing of the Nexus Q
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times:
"Etched into the base of Google's new wireless home media player that was introduced on Wednesday is its most intriguing feature. On the underside of the Nexus Q is a simple inscription: Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A. The Google executives and engineers who decided to build the player here are engaged in an experiment in American manufacturing. 'We've been absent for so long, we decided, "Why don't we try it and see what happens?" ... It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States. During the last decade, abundant low-cost Chinese labor and looser environmental regulations have virtually erased what was once a vibrant American industry. ... At $299, the device costs significantly more than competing systems from companies like Apple and Roku. Google says this is in part because of the higher costs of manufacturing in the United States, but the company expects to bring the price down as it increases volume. The company is hoping that consumers will be willing to pay more, though it is unlikely that the “Made in America” lineage will be part of any marketing campaign.'"
"The company is hoping that consumers will be willing to pay more, though it is unlikely that the “Made in America” lineage will be part of any marketing campaign.'"
People excoriate execs and companies who move parts of their businesses offshore (often rightly, and also often without questioning the policies that contribute to it often being cheaper and easier to employ people thousands of miles away in other countries).
They (and especially the most indignant among them) should be happy to pay a little more to keep the work local; after all, they're demanding that others do it.
Quite a lot of the components inside the device are probably imported.
"low cost Chinese labor and looser environmental regulations"
Those aren't the only factors. The fact of the matter is that pretty much everything is clustered in SE Asia nowadays, and that the labor market is a lot more dynamic. Need slightly shorter screws? Call the factory down the street, they'll start arriving within the next hour. Changed the specs for your unibody case? The factory downtown will deliver new ones the same day. Need a new assembly plant? Build it and staff it by next week. Everything is done locally, reducing ETA and shipping costs in the process. These things also count tremendously.
"But where do all the parts come from?"....anyway, it's expensive as hell to make something here but there's some business value and even cost saving in the fact that they can get any manufactured phone to any place in America in 1 day with Fedex. Even the fastest but still economical shipping methods from Asia are 2-3 weeks lead time at least because it's all ship-based. Get your stuff held up at the port? Time to order another couple thousands then because you've got waiting customers. The other option is to just over-order and pay lots of money to ship and guard your expensive inventory state-side and then have to put them on clearance when the sales figures don't match up with their overblown estimate. Do you know how much Nintendo lost on Wii shortages? Do you know how much HP lost on excess tablets? So there's some value in making things in the US from a cost saving perspective.
Ah, finally an Apple user I like! One that makes Apple look bad.
I keep waiting for them to replace Chinese workers with American robots. If they did that it could actually cost less. You pay less shipping. Maybe we just don't have a robot that's good enough and cheap enough; but we will. A lot of the outsourced labor is things like cleaning, assembling, etc. Come on Google. If you can program 'bots to drive cars, surely you can program them to polish screens.
There should be a rule on Slashdot that no paywall links are allowed to be posted. How can we comment on an article that we cannot see?
Proverbs 21:19
Cause it's jobs for Americans , paid by selling goods to Americans and that America has traditionally made better products than the Chinese. .. but jobs and peopple who have money to spend on products built in America makes America grow stronger in the world arena.
Cheap is nice
Stop thinking it's nationalism and patriotism . Buy American goods to give jobs to Americans. Simple and just what America needs : jobs jobs jobs.
That I can't figure out what exactly I would use it for, if this thing was a full on Google TV, plus DVR (and maybe keep those social media things...though really that seems like something that should just be built into Google TV). Then sure I'd be fine with the cost and maybe even more! But this thing seems simply less capable than a product they already put out (Google TV) and costs more. I simply can't find a reason to buy...and frankly with the whole straight from Google and made in the US things I kind of want to want to buy it but I don't. Maybe I missed some aspect of its functionality or future but they didn't reveal anything like that from what I saw.
The real issue with this thing is it is too limited. Why does it not also act as a googletv?
Then it could run onlive, netflix, google play, etc. You could also side load your own apps. Instead this is a streaming media player for way too much money.
Why does it need a good amp? I have a receiver, that is where the good amp lives.
Because at the end of the day you will pay either way. Either pay more for your products and give your fellow citizens a reasonable living or pay more in taxes for their unemployment, food stamps and welfare and on top of that deal with the social ills such as higher crime rates that can come when someone has nothing to lose.
So, this is not a Google TV device yet can connect to a TV with limited functionality. Its too expensive as a standalone network media streamer compared to other products available. I don't need a network device to power its own speakers. Compare this to a $120 Apple TV or even a $190 Boxee Box and its a very over-priced and mediocre competitor. So what is the point?
Obviously if Google is using on-shore manufacturing they are already assuming this as a niche product and don't have to worry about huge demand and high production costs.
I think Google mucked this product up as they are positioning it as an expansive hipster device in a market already saturated with better value and feature rich products. All Google should have done is create a little HDMI dongle that sits on a TV/Receiver that provides AirPlay like connectivity for Android devices which are capable of providing all the same functionality as the Q and could do so for a small fraction of the cost.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
http://business-standard.com/india/news/made-inusa-is-back-as-google-doesretro/478854/
Looks like Business Standard Syndicates it from NY Times
People might go along with the the "buy American" line for a while, but if they can save money by buying cheaper products with the same or more \better features they will soon turn to doing just that.
Well, that's the question, isn't it? Does an American company building the products it designs nearby have any advantages in quality control or innovation that offsets the slightly higher (China's edge here is often exaggerated) costs?
In an area where innovation is gradual and nobody has a chance of a killer technological lead, I think that cost is likely to be king. I have friends who went to work in the auto industry and were amazed to find that managers would sell their soul for a $1 saving on a $30,000 car. In areas with rapid and radical innovation, there might be an advantage. I don't think you can answer this question generically. It depends on the character of the market, industry and the company.
Apple is an interesting case. Apple didn't start by offshoring manufacturing, and even after they'd gone that route they hung on to their last domestic plant because they thought there was value to keeping designers close to the manufacturing process. And it worked. Even in the pre-Second Coming years when their product line was complicated and supply chain messy, they manufactured very high quality stuff. It'll be interesting to see what happens when that know-how fades with time. People will automatically attribute any decline in quality or innovation to Jobs' death, but if those things happen they may be the result of changes in corporate culture introduced by Jobs.
Offshoring iPods definitely was a winner because of their relatively low cost and high volume, and the need to compete against low cost alternatives. It seems to me that the same factors would apply to the Nexus Q, which is just another streaming media box. But maybe Google knows something we don't. Or maybe Google needs to gain more experience before it can rely on overseas contractors.
Bottom line on the question of on-shoring vs. off-shoring: it depends.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
right you can't require somebody to work 80+hour weeks to meet a deadline in the US
i have 2 words for you
Mr Teller could you get Mr Penn to explain those words??
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So I watched google's video introduction of the Q. http://youtu.be/s1Y5dDQW4TY
I have absolutely no clue what this thing does or is or anything really. Except that apparently it will let people come to your house and play music from their phone. The video feels like dot com boom marketing. It's like zombo.com.
It's a vicious cycle to an extent. The poorest people like to go to Walmart and pay the lowest possible prices for cheaply made Chinese manufactured products. People with a little more room in their budgets might be willing to pay for quality, but the poor can't afford that luxury. Seeing how well places like Walmart are doing, and how well manufacturer that outsource productions can control costs, more and more stores become like Walmart, and more and more manufacturers offshore production. This increases the number of poor people as more manufacturing jobs leave and more retail places try to squeeze the last penny out of their labor costs. So fewer and fewer people have the extra room in their budgets to pay for quality and more and more of them buy cheaply manufactured goods at Walmart.
To make matters even worse, the premium for quality manufacture keeps going up, because fewer and fewer places are doing it, and the economies of scale fail. So those of use with regular middle class incomes who could still afford to shop at local stores and pay a bit more for quality find it harder and harder to even find the stores and products to spend more money on. Outside of major metro areas, almost everyone buys cheap crap from big box stores, whether they can afford better or not. There's nothing else available.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'm one of the people out at I/O that was given one, but I've only taken it out of the box to look at it so far (too many sessions, not enough time).
To go along with the expensive design part. The device has a lot of mass. It was designed to sit on a table, and be interacted with locally. The top half of the Q spins (I believe as a volume control, but I have not had a chance to set it up yet) If you look at the breakdown diagrams they briefly show in the introduction video - there's also a complex set of components inside of the device. So that increases the assembly cost as well.
It's not meant to be a simple video player, nor just a slave to the TV. Hooking it up to a TV is technically optional.
I'm glad it is being produced in the US - we need more companies demanding device manufacture and assembly in the US - it will only help drive down the US assembly costs due to volume. We used to (10 years ago) do a LOT of assembly in the US for all sorts of devices, but the economic downturns drove a lot of assembly over seas (increasing some costs, decreasing others).
It's so nice to have both, that Google decided to put a TOSLINK digital audio output on the Nexus Q alongside the HDMI. I don't know where you got the idea that it had only HDMI and no digital output.
Raise your hand if you want "social media" mixed with your TV watching experience. *crickets*
Facebook wall activity: "Charles is watching Gilmore Girls on CWTV."
That's backwards. It's "Bill is watching videos his friends posted to Facebook. Hasn't watched TV in ages."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)