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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."
But this story has so much "attitude" it's unpleasant to get through.
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
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.
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?
Why not build them here?
Because the rest of the supply chain (LCDs, RAM, etc) is still in East Asia?
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.
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.
Because the iPhone 6 will be as thin as a credit card, Apple will hire fetuses.
Table-ized A.I.
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".
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
"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?
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)
You might remember those days, when everyone complained about how expensive Apple hardware was.
Yesterday?
health care being tied to jobs hurts the USA for jobs and getting rid of that can give us more jobs hear.
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 ---]
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.
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 !
" China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn ..."
This is a quote from TFA not something the submitter wrote his/herself.
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.