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Foxconn Thinks the iPhone 5 Is a Pain

pigrabbitbear writes "China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn, is now taking the fall for the iPhone 5 shortage that's annoyed consumers and worried investors in recent weeks. What's the holdup? They don't have enough parts? They're training new line workers? They're too busy trying to regain control of their factories after employees started rioting? Nah. According to the company, the iPhone 5 is just a huge pain to put together. That bit about the riots is a little bit true, too, though."

41 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Ug by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative
    The quote from the unnamed Foxconn source is interesting, if true. (Good luck swapping the hard drive (flash) or battery like I have with my 80GB iPod!)

    But this story has so much "attitude" it's unpleasant to get through.

    1. Re:Ug by Dahamma · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have no interest in defending Foxconn or Apple for the conditions in their factories, but yes, this article (and others on that site) is so flawed and snarky it's barely worth crediting.

      My favorite gems:

      The company had been running an internship program that put 14- to 16-year-old children on the factory floor

      And the link they reference in that quote (to anther article on their OWN site) says it was vocational interns (16+) and college students (18+). So more accurate would be "16 to 22". You'd think they could quote their own articles correctly.

      Also from that article referenced: The suicide rate at Foxconn is still lower than that of the general population in China, but striking for its concentration among a group of workers at a single company.

      Wha?? Someone failed basic statistics. If the rate is lower over a population (where "rate" = incidents/population), how is the concentration (eh, also incidents/population) striking? In fact, it's only striking because of the *anecdotes* sensationalized by stories like this...

      Basic human rights and working conditions in China are a big problem, but it doesn't help the cause to make up facts and statistics that don't exist...

    2. Re:Ug by garaged · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Contextualizing, it is likely that work environment should discourage suicide, maybe the rate is alarming compared against similar factories

      --
      I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
    3. Re:Ug by JakartaDean · · Score: 4, Informative

      The company had been running an internship program that put 14- to 16-year-old children on the factory floor

      And the link they reference in that quote (to anther article on their OWN site) says it was vocational interns (16+) and college students (18+). So more accurate would be "16 to 22".

      I don't want to defend the authors, but Foxconn did recently admit that some of it vocational interns were 14 - 16 years old. It was on the BBC, among others.

      --
      The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
  2. Hey if China is whining about building them.... by Grayhand · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why not build them here? Yes they will cost slightly more but obviously given the rabid demand they haven't crossed the price point that drives away customers. The bigger issue is in spite dividends and buy backs and such Apple still has over 100 billion in their mattress and they don't have a clue what to do with it! Even with the increased production costs it's doubtful it would dent the 100 billion in the bank while it would mean hiring 500,000 new people that might turn into iPhone customers! It worked for Henry Ford. Being a good citizen could result in a windfall instead of reduced profits. Apple can't go broke at this point so why not help their mother country out for once? They get the added benefit of getting rid of two weeks in shipment delays due to having to ship them from China. They could also get them to Europe quicker so it's a win/win!

    1. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by MikeKD · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why not build them here?

      Because the rest of the supply chain (LCDs, RAM, etc) is still in East Asia?

    2. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why not build them here? Yes they will cost slightly more but obviously given the rabid demand they haven't crossed the price point that drives away customers. The bigger issue is in spite dividends and buy backs and such Apple still has over 100 billion in their mattress and they don't have a clue what to do with it! Even with the increased production costs it's doubtful it would dent the 100 billion in the bank while it would mean hiring 500,000 new people that might turn into iPhone customers! It worked for Henry Ford. Being a good citizen could result in a windfall instead of reduced profits. Apple can't go broke at this point so why not help their mother country out for once? They get the added benefit of getting rid of two weeks in shipment delays due to having to ship them from China. They could also get them to Europe quicker so it's a win/win!

      A Chinese Foxconn worker makes around $400/month, $4800 year. A worker in the USA would cost about 10 times as much once benefits are included.

      If it takes 500,000 chinese workers to make the phone, it would probably take 600,000 - 750,000 USA workers because USA workers aren't going to put in the same amount of overtime. But it if takes 500,000....500,000 times $50,000/year is $25B/year in labor costs alone and ignores the billions it would cost to build the factories.

    3. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bullshit.

      They could probably do it for around 20/hr in oklahoma. Many assembly work jobs go for that rate. The issue is unions. Since apple would be establishing a new manufacturing plant, and would come union free to start, they just have to keep it that way. Pay people on time, don't subject them to cancer causing chemicals, and give them proper work hours, and you are basically golden.

      40$/hr doing assembly work?

      I do fucking CAD/CAM and get paid way less than that!

    4. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      OK, even if you accept the wages arguement, the Chinese will accept pay far below US minimum wage (around $8/hour in most states, last time I looked, although that was a while ago.)

      But to be honest, the major reason is that companies like Foxconn are extremely good at getting an assembly line for a new product set up in a very short space of time. This was the reason the Raspberry Pi, for example, was outsourced to a non-Western country - Western manufacturers could match the price, but would take months to set up their production lines. Non-Western manufacturers could get everything set up in weeks.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    5. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by Xacid · · Score: 5, Informative

      There was a slashdot article a while back explaining exactly what that difference would be. It was somewhere in the ballpark of $20-40 more per device.

      Apple's comment regarding the topic "we're in the business of making phones, not creating jobs".

    6. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by scheme · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where are you pulling your numbers from? I would like to know how you came to your price figures if they actually did that.

      I don't care if you were sarcastic, I'm serious. I would like to know what the cost difference would be if the iPhone 5 was made in the USA versus China.

      There have been studies that estimates are about $30 to $160 more per iphone in costs ( http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-manufacturing-cost-foxconn-2012-4) . That means apple's margin for the devices would go from $452 in gross profits to around $293 per iphone. It'd cost more but wouldn't be outrageously more.

      --
      "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
    7. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by Karlt1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "you steal the guy that is writing it... John Hubbard. Apple, that firm that invents nothing, but steals everything (Jobs said so himself!) and became filthy rich with FreeBSD, offered John Hubbard so much money he could not resist...... has bought away the mainguy behind it"

      So you steal stuff by paying for it?

    8. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Riiight that why all the assembly jobs are still in the US.

      It's not really the money. China has something like a $70 price advantage on a US-built iPhone. Apple people would pay it.

      What you get in China, is that the factory that makes those mini screws you need for the iPhone is just down the road. This doesn't happen in Oklahoma - the industries have all left. The logistics of doing it in the US are nearly impossible.

      Second, if you wanted to build that screw factory, in China, you just grease the right palms and build a screw factory, maybe with State financial support. In the US you begin a 7-year permitting process.

      In the city where my office is Red Lobster wanted to put a restaurant. One of their canned designs they've done a hundred of. After two years in the city planner's office, they were at a meeting and the planner decided that she didn't like the propane tank in the back of the proposed restaurant, because, she said, somebody could pull off on the Interstate and shoot it with a high powered rifle, and cause an explosion that would kill everybody in the restaurant. This has never happened, even in a Michael Bay movie, and there are a dozen other restaurants in the plaza with the same setup, but she decided that Red Lobster should bury an underground tank (in a flood plane) big enough for all the restaurants to share, and that would make the world a happier place. They told the planner to go to hell, walked out of the meeting, and never came back to town.

      21st Century America - inexplicably uncompetitive.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    9. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you steal stuff by paying for it?

      His point was that they bought John and now John doesn't contribute anymore. Presumably because he spends all his time on proprietary code.

      I don't know if that's true, but his argument, as framed, is that Apple took FreeBSD's most valuable asset and didn't give back after that. That's woudln't be 'paying for it', though John would have been well-rewarded for his efforts.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    10. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by BradleyUffner · · Score: 5, Funny

      You might remember those days, when everyone complained about how expensive Apple hardware was.

      Yesterday?

    11. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by Kreigaffe · · Score: 3, Informative

      Something tells me that lady may have had an interest in one of those other restaurants, maybe one that needed a propane tank.

      I refuse to believe that anybody is actually that goddamned stupid. The propane tank wouldn't explode. PHYSICS DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT.

      Truth told she probably is that stupid... but that would make me too sad, so I'm sticking to her being a corrupt fucking shill looking to get a payout from someone else for getting red lobster to build a propane tank for them. :(

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    12. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not unethical to profit from the fruits of your labor. It is unethical to profit from the fruits of other people's labor, if you don't assign their fair share for their labor to them.

    13. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by root_42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But to be honest, the major reason is that companies like Foxconn are extremely good at getting an assembly line for a new product set up in a very short space of time. This was the reason the Raspberry Pi, for example, was outsourced to a non-Western country - Western manufacturers could match the price, but would take months to set up their production lines. Non-Western manufacturers could get everything set up in weeks.

      And yet, after some months, the Raspberry Pi foundation moved manufacturing to the UK -- for the same retail price! (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925). So why shouldn't Apple be able to do the same thing? Granted, the RP Foundation isn't out to make a huge profit, but still, Apple should be able to source its components and products a little bit more ethically.

      --
      [--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
    14. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by Ambvai · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I got a good dose of this the other day when my sister was working with a rich college kid, straight out of China.

      The concept of Home Depot, a store where you'd just walk in and buy a hammer, was a novel thought. He kind of knew that, conceptually, there had to be some place where equipment like that was sold, but the idea that people who didn't work in the field would ever go there, and there was the kind of demand to have a store that large blew his mind.

    15. Re:Hey if China is whining about building them.... by transam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you steal stuff by paying for it?

      His point was that they bought John and now John doesn't contribute anymore. Presumably because he spends all his time on proprietary code.

      I don't know if that's true, but his argument, as framed, is that Apple took FreeBSD's most valuable asset and didn't give back after that. That's woudln't be 'paying for it', though John would have been well-rewarded for his efforts.

      It's not true. He couldn't even get Jordan's name right, much less his involvement and commitment to FreeBSD at the time he was picked up by Apple. It's a huge disservice to the FreeBSD project to suggest that one single person, such as Jordan, mattered as much as OP suggests.

  3. The Iphone 6 do it yourself kit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now available in stores. We took the same great design as the IPHONE 5 but made it BETTER. It's better because you do it yourself! Now you can feel an even closer relationship with your Iphone because yes that is your blood sweat and tears that went into making it come alive.. Literally its razor fucking sharp kids.
    *Kids under the age of 15 need adult supervision "what you pay them is up to you"

  4. Pain? by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Foxconn may say the iphone5 is a pain, but I think the workers getting paid peanuts for 80 hours shifts might have a different idea of what 'pain' means. Besides, how much quality assembly is really possible when your workforce is bleary-eyed and exhausted? I bet there's a lot of QA rejects and extra controls required to keep quality from plummeting.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  5. iFixit by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's ironic, because iFixit finally gave the iPhone 5 a much better score than all previous generations as far as repair goes. In the factory the boards are populated by machine, leaving the final assembly of the various parts by hand, which is basically the same process you have when manually disassembling / reassembling the device. Just doesn't jive with what iFixit had to say. Sounds like they are trying to shift blame to me.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:iFixit by lewiscr · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sounds like they are trying to shift blame to me.

      What did YOU DO?

    2. Re:iFixit by robbak · · Score: 3, Informative

      iFixit's rating was because the screen came off easily after removing a couple of screws, and that provided easy access to the battery. After that, the rest of the phone was tightly packed, and fiddly to get apart, and they did say that re-aligning it to factory specs would be hard to impossible.

      --
      Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
  6. Design for manufacturing? by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any Slashdotters know anything about manufacturing engineering, and would like to fill us in on why Apple can construct such a sophisticated thing as an iPhone 5, that still needs to be assembled largely by hand?

    Surely a mass-marketed consumer device like that, they'd design for manufacturability, and/or design the tools required to assemble it efficiently?

    Maybe, with (Chinese) labour costs being such an insignificant part of the sticker price, it's simply not worth the trouble?

    1. Re:Design for manufacturing? by mosb1000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They can't build robots capable of the same wide variety of fine, rapid movements as people. Assembling the device robotically would require a large number of purpose build machines to carry out each step. That would add years to the amount of time it takes to bring a product to market, which is unacceptable in consumer electronics.

    2. Re:Design for manufacturing? by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because robots have more human rights in China.

    3. Re:Design for manufacturing? by jrumney · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's perfectly normal for final assembly to be done by hand. We're not talking soldering here, but inserting flat cables into sockets, clipping PCBs into place inside the aluminium chassis, and closing everything up. It would take quite specialized machinery to automate this, and the lifespan of the average iPhone model is just not long enough to justify that.

    4. Re:Design for manufacturing? by Osgeld · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "A lot of that can be done quickly using 3D printers"

      ugh, ok when your producing thousands to millions of units per day, you cant take the line down every 20 min cause your rep-rap made doohicky crapped out. even good 3D printers cant make parts that are going to hold up in a production line very long.

      so now your getting shit milled and waterjet to make special tools for a product that changes every year just to inset a screw that cost a multiplier more than a persons yearly income, even if you were paying American rates.

    5. Re:Design for manufacturing? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You probably could do something like that - for a price. And the price would be a big one. Every time you wanted to change something you'd have to retool the machines. And things do change - you make a couple thousand prototypes, find that one screw is in the wrong place and the screen cracks all of the time, you go back and retool the case or whatever, show the slaves how to screw the part in and off you go.

      In your world, you would have to retool both the part and the machine. Easy, you say, just rig the machines to you can change them. Apparently not so easy - otherwise it would be done that way.

      Do you seriously think the designers of these devices haven't scrutinized these decisions carefully? "The iPhone could be put together using simple machinery." Really? Then why is every cell phone, every little camera, every big DLSR and in fact, every bit of consumer electronics made this way?

      It's just not easy to build a machine as dexterous as a human.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    6. Re:Design for manufacturing? by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nineteen components, and they still get it wrong.

      That's nothing. I bought a bunch of microphones from a Chinese manufacturer a couple of years ago. The power supply circuit boards were machine-built, AFAIK, so they were consistent. All that they had to do by hand was screw a single circuit board down with... maybe four screws, screw the case together with... I think two screws, and shove on a knob or two on the front. They might have had to snap a power jack into the back or something. We're talking dead simple here.

      I'll let you guess what percentage of them had at least one screw rolling around in the box. Hint: it was not a single-digit percentage. Most companies can't cope with that sort of return rate.

      If you want quality out of China, you'll only get it if you have enough volume that they will care if they lose your business. And you will have to do random inspections of their factories, which means having employees on the ground in China. Fail to meet either of those requirements and, assuming what I've seen is typical, it would probably be cheaper for them to ship you the parts and for you to pay to have them assembled in the U.S. once you factor in the astounding return rate. Assuming that you do proper QA in the U.S., you'll be disassembling and reassembling a quarter of them anyway, so you might as well eliminate the redundant assembly step and just assemble it over here. Cheaper import duties, that way, too.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  7. Thin is In by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    TFA: The company had been running an internship program that put 14- to 16-year-old children on the factory floor, and if you've ever built a Lego spaceship with a teenager, you'll know that those nimble little fingers are great at dealing with the small parts.

    Because the iPhone 6 will be as thin as a credit card, Apple will hire fetuses.

    1. Re:Thin is In by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 4, Funny

      Which is why they do this in Asia: Because Caucasians are just too damn tall.

  8. Why does anyone still care? by firesyde424 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The folks who stood in line for hours(or days in some cases), or ordered one online and still haven't seen it yet, got screwed. Not because of manufacturing delays, but because they bought a phone that was already out of date before it was even released. HTC and Samsung had better phones out eight and six months ago, respectively. I bought the one x. It has a better LCD, better resolution, better talk time, same resolution camera, NFC, WiFi direct, and a whole list of other things the "cutting edge" iPhone 5 doesn't have. And here's the punchline..... I paid $300 less for my One X than you did for the 32 gb iPhone 5.

    1. Re:Why does anyone still care? by Grizzley9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because your definition of "better" is different than other peoples? A spec list does not a great phone make.

  9. health care being tied to jobs hurts the USA for j by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    health care being tied to jobs hurts the USA for jobs and getting rid of that can give us more jobs hear.

  10. What is happening to Slashdot's submit process ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Samzenpus, can you please do a better job on the submission approval process?

    " China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn ..."

    First of all, Foxconn is from Taiwan, not China.
     
    Second, no matter how much the submitter pigrabbitbear loaths Foxconn, the ill-feeling pigrabbitbear has towards Foxconn is NOT related to the story of TFA, and Samzenpus, the mod who approved the submit, should have known better than allowed "the already-loathed Foxconn" to pass through the approval process.
     
    Slashdot is faltering, and it's not the users who has brought it down.
     
    It's the moderators, such as Samzenpus, who have failed to carry out their job duty, in a professional manner.
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     

     
     

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  11. Globalism... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am NOT a fan of globalism. (But that doesn't mean I am a protectionist. I simply feel that it is unsustainable to expect a high wage economy to purchase high wage products indefinately, when employment rates in that high wage economy drop like rocks, as all the jobs move overseas, due to people chasing low low prices. The result muddies the market terribly, and I really don't see how it can be sustained. In the short term it makes you filthy ass rich. In the long term it causes protracted recessions.)

    During the Cold War we in the West were sheilded from a huge pool of cheap skilled labor. This created a high standard of living in the West. When the Americans set out to destroy the economy of the USSR and 'won ' the Cold War they also made that pool of cheap labor available for exploitation by Western corporations. Naturally Western corporations sought to maximize their profits by migrating production facilities to where the most skilled of the cheap labor is, to the old 'Eastern Bloc', without thinking about the long term consequences since American corporations in particular are incapable of planning further ahead than one fiscal quarter. Are you missing Communism and the Iron Curtain yet? (That last part is sarcasm.)

  12. Re:What is happening to Slashdot's submit process by AliasBackslash · · Score: 4, Informative

    " China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn ..."

    This is a quote from TFA not something the submitter wrote his/herself.

  13. Same person by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The submitter, pigrabbitbear, is the author/editor/whatever of the story. Everything he has ever submitted has been from motherboard.vice.com, and he even openly uses it has his contact link.