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Google To Close Its American Moto X Factory
An anonymous reader writes "After only one year in operation, Google's Moto X factory in Fort Worth, TX, is scheduled to close at the end of 2014. The decision to close apparently has nothing to do with Google's decision to sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo and everything to do with poor sales numbers and high labor and shipping costs in the U.S. The factory had, at one point, employed 3,800 people. Their ranks now number at about 700. Moto E and Moto G, newer and cheaper iterations of Moto X, have sold in more profitable numbers overseas, so Google's original rationale of building phones nearer to the largest customer base to decrease time between assembly and delivery to end user will unsurprisingly force the closure of the U.S.-based factory and transfer labor overseas as well."
...ships product regularly, I have watched domestic shipping costs triple over the last 6-7 years. I understand what Motorola is saying even if I am disappointed by it.
Soon to the passengers of the B Ark.
Perhaps they would have sold better with a removable SD card.
remove Health Care from jobs and then labor costs will come down. Out side of the usa your job does not control your Health Care
remove Health Care from jobs and then labor costs will come down. Out side of the usa your job does not control your Health Care
Someone has to pay for the health care. Remove insurance from health care and then health care costs will come down. Outside of the USA, an insurance company does not need to profit for you to get health care.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I do not understand
Why must labor cost in US be high ?
Why ?
Captcha: unclean
There are dozens phones, each with one minuscule feature that sets it apart from the rest. The market is saturated. Verizon's website shows 31 different smartphones and most of those will roll off and be replaced within a year. And, judging by the pricing, they apparently can't even give the Motorolas away.
Remove health insurance companies from the equation, go to a single payer system, and then things will get far better. The US spends twice as much on health care than the next country on the list, Norway... and we have jack and shit to show for it because the money goes into the insurance companies and flies overseas, forever out of the US economy.
Silly socialist! The risk of agonizing death from some untreated illness just incentivizes lazy poor people to work harder.
Not until the paramedics check your credit history before they check your vital signs will America be truly great again!
I agree, make health care a social right and decouple it from employment and income. It would be interesting to see what the CEOs come up with to blame for the next rounds of layoffs.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
In the early 1990s, I remember the mass layoffs in that recession being blamed on "the lazy US worker" compared to the stereotypical [1] Japanese worker who was touted as someone who would give his or her life for the firm he worked for.
[1]: Yes, stereotypical.
I'm very picky about my phones: had an HTC from 3.5 years ago, but when the 2 years came up I couldn't find a suitable replacement until I finally went with the MotoX. First off, let me make it clear--this is a fantastic phone, one of (if not the) best, and for many reasons. One of the reasons I went with it was the made-in-America bit, but honestly, I don't see another alternative--made in America or elsewhere--that's this good. That having been said, the next-closest contender was a Samsung, and I would still stick with the Google flagship phone over the Samsung regardless of manufacturing location--unfortunately, Lenovo's entrance has completely turned me off from buying another Motorola phone after this. I hope my MotoX lasts a long time...
Everywhere I look it's Samsung, Samsung. My personal experience after having two Samsung phones and two Motorola phones is that Samsung has prettier LCDs and better cameras but their quality sucks. They are constantly locking up or working very slowly. But... everywhere I look the advertising is all about Samsung. Has Google even tried to market it's Motorola stuff? The last time I saw anyone pushing Motorola was back when the kiosk guys at the mall kept stopping people to look at the Lap Dock. I have one now, btw.. I love it! But... I was never going to buy one at their price! I bought it used and cheap after they discontinued them.
REALLY tempted to get one of the wood backed ones, but seriously.. Fuck AT&T.
Well, that and my old-man eyes really like the Note series screens (with the caveat that the Note 2 is the largest I want to go. It's already pushing the "will it fit in my pocket" test limit).
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Why is it that as a Canadian I pay some insane shipping costs but when I order stuff from Ebay/Chinese vendors I get it really fast and 1/5 the shipping price. Go figure....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Not so sterotypical, companies and workers did have a model of cooperation that worked well. However, as the Japanese management welcomed American investor "values" and began fucking with laborers, while the govt kept borrowing and spending, the "magic" disappeared. It took several decades, but it is all gone now, sadly.
Technology should be employed to address the human condition of Food, Education, Shelter and Medical treatment.
Instead, we use technology to build weapons, shiny trinkets to enforce a consumerist lifestyle which is destructive.
We are branching out into using technology now to control and subjugate most of humanity so that a new dark age can take hold.
If it isn't stopped there won't be any intelligent life on this planet.
Perhaps we will find out why after half a century of looking for E.T., nobody answers is because Intelligent life tends to snuff itself out.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What kind of business fails to compete in an arena where the fattest margins of all electronics can be found?
Democrat president Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to control the economy; During WWII he froze wages. Like any typical politician of either party, he failed to foresee the obvious and predictable response of the much-more-nimble business community. Businesses rapidly found another way to boost compensation in order to keep/attract the best employees; something the employees would happily take because it would be even more valuable than cash: "health insurance". Prior to this time, most Americans paid their health costs out-of-pocket and did not have health insurance. After the wage freeze, employees got their frozen pay PLUS health insurance (whose value was NOT TAXED) that would pay their medical bills (allowing them to NOT spend their limited and taxed cash on healthcare). Once this trend started, it proved impossible to break; now we all expect our employers to "give" us health insurance and we all expect not to be taxed for it.
This replacement-for-money (health insurance) we can "spend" getting healthcare does not "feel" like money to us and cannot be "spent" elsewhere so it becomes a driver of healthcare cost inflation. First, we do not feel financial pain when we use it (sort of like using credit cards versus cash). Second, we are insulated from rising medical prices (we are promised a benefit, not a price tag) so it has become a convenient way for the government to further tax us - by underpaying for medicare and medicaid services, which causes hospitals and doctors to shift the costs to the bills of people with private health insurance.
Obamacare will likely destroy this linkage. There's SOME poetic symmetry to one liberal Democrat undoing the economic distortion caused by a previous liberal Democrat... but that'll likely be of little consolation to the people who will no longer have an employer on their side in matters related to health insurance. Most Americans have depended upon corporate HR people spending lots of time comparing the costs and benefits of various vendors and policies, negotiating the best deals possible, and intervening when there are problems. After Obamacare fully kicks-in (probably in 2017 - it's tough to be sure given the dozens of arbitrary waivers and extensions in place) people will likely pick whatever policy looks "best" to on a government website and then when things go wrong nobody will be there to help them. Most people will probably pick policies about as well as they pick their food and thier 401K investments - which means they'll do a much worse job than their employer's HR people used to do. I actually support the idea of sparating insurance from employment, but I think it ought to have been done VERY differently and much more explicitly (perhaps by initially changing the laws so that individuals and small businesses were treated the same as big employers on health insurance (which has NOT been the case historically)
so you just make the phones in china and they magically appear in stores?
you still got to ship them all over the country if you want to sell the chunks of crap
Such laws (banning or regulating various "sin" related things like sex toys, porn, alcohol, etc) were common throughout the US for decades. Each state has changed or deleted these types of regulations and bans over time at their own pace (so in each instance SOME state is going to be last). The repeals have often been MANY years after they stopped enforcing them and most people forgot they were even on the books (lookup local laws related to transportation or pesky animals for some laughs). In this particular case, these laws were put in place with wording that would make them unlikely to hurt individuals but would be problematic for "sex shops" (which have generally be considered "undesireable" neighors) while not using language that specifically targeted those shops (making them more-easily struck down by virtue of being targeted legislation). The There are still thousands of crazy-sounding laws on the books all across the country - many in places like CA and NY which so many people consider "progressive".
It's a great political tactic to sling something like this into a conversation as a quasi-clever sleight to Texas (and by implication right-wingers) but the effect is lost on those of us with an education.
... which was a great idea, but extremely poorly executed.
The Moto G and Moto E is really amazing for what it is - budget phones that have all the right things - IPS screen, snappy processor, good software, respectable brand, LTE (on E and Gv2), etc. It sells extremely well in the UK and many other markets in the EU.
If they opened up a factory in the UK or somewhere else in the EU, it may be 10-15 pounds more expensive to make than in China, but still there would be plenty of takers. In fact probably more so as it is manufactured locally and in an advanced economy - a sign of quality in its own right. The Raspberry Pi is made in the UK, and they were able to pretty much match cost with the batches produced in China.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I don't think rare earth minerals have anything to do with it, as it's merely *assembled* in the U.S. You can pretty much count on the fact that most or all of the parts are actually produced in east Asia. I think the problem re: low sales was due to slighty lower-than-normal specs, no SD expansion, and possibly lack of marketing. I mean, as I recall, the thing was only *slightly* lower priced than other major-manufacturer's flagship devices and had a number of sacrifices in terms of specs.
One huge glaring flaw I see is with Google's adamant decision to disavow any support for external SD storage. I know it's a tad messy in Android and that is a valid concern (though they could make it cleaner if they wanted), but when they mark up 16gb worth of storage by several hundred percent (from 16gb models to 32gb models), some people are going to notice, and refuse to buy.
This is why we need to be bring in foreign workers with the H1B visa program. There simply is not enough people with STEM experience who can build these phones here in the U.S.
Robots don't need health care...
Welcome to 21st century manufacturing.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It you wonder what effect that would have on employment look at France
Seriously, there was close to ZERO marketing. Google really did buy MOTO for it's patents. If they really cared about making the company profitable they would have spent a bunch more on advertising as well as better R&D for the phones.
I primarily use Google products and yet I received not a single bit of advertising for any moto product.
Wrong. There is a large number of countries where health insurance costs are directly linked to wages. Quiet a few taking some predefined percentage from your wage. This goes for a wide range of different countries. Many European countries as well as countries like for example Vietnam.
Moto X was a relatively expensive phone, with low specs. If you had $600 dollars to spend on a phone (either yourself or through contract subsidies), there would be very little reason to pick Moto X. The main attraction of the Moto X is that there are many variants in terms of colors and materials, and that's what you pay a premium for. Problem is, in this price range you already have lots of choices for very nicely designed phones, many with better specs. What's left is a niche market that is willing to pay a premium for stuff like a wooden phone back on a otherwise mediocre phone. That's still some market. However, I don't see how you can expect that to sell as well as a cheap phone with good specs like Moto G.
Also, the article suggests in tone that Moto X and phones like Moto X sell better in asia, but the fact is Moto X hasn't sold well anywhere. It's just completely different phones like Moto G that are doing well.
I remember hearing the same thing during the Carter administration. Its nothing new. What *is* new is that we now realize that maybe the Japanese didn't wreck the US economy all by themselves - instead our own 1%-ers did. The Japs were just a handy scapegoat to deflect the blame - "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" -style of distraction.
C|N>K
Perhaps you should look at France indeed, as their 24-55 age group has better unemployment figures that the US.
Take your whole company and get the hell out of here.
People really do want their SD Card storage. Or at least if that isn't available they want a phone with as much capacity built in as possible--for their music, movies, games and so they don't run out of space at Aunt Tildy's 70th birthday party when the stripper jumps out of the cake. Who knew?
PS: I have an account but not bothering to log in because fck beta.
It doesn't have to be single-payer. Germany has over 100 healthinsurancecompanies (German style spelling), but they're non-profit and heavily regulated. Works for Switzerland and a number of other countries too.
II like the phones, my moto-x seem to be a nice mixture of size, speed and software. My wife is very happy with her moto-x, and my three kids (20,18,15) are very impressed with their phones. I would not say that any of these are over-priced, they seem to be reasonably priced.
I know that google-motorola faces some hurdles with the US wireless carriers keeping them out of the market, much like amazon using their physical book monopoly to extort a bettter price on e-books (4 years ago MacMillan, right now Hachette), but stuff always changes.
I would say that google-motorola did not approach the market for the long term, instead they shopped for a buyer after spending less than a year selling a US made phone. Saying that they did it because of shipping costs is a cop-out (competition also has to pay for shipping, lenovo will have to as well). Maybe google-motorola would not have been profitable with the current moto-x, but I think if they had continued to develop phones with steady incremental advances over time, they would have been profitable.
The only issue I had with motorola is their order fulfillment process, my order for 3 moto-g phones got placed on hold, and when I was doing the ordering, I had to order each phone separately. I had to call customer service who told me that the order was suspicious. I had already seen the order total, and really did not have any trouble in figuring that three times $200 would be a $600 order before entering my credit card. The customer service rep told me that my order was released, and when I called little more than a week later (no phones), I found out that the hold had not been released.
I am disappointed with the sale and the subsequent decision to shutdown US manufacturing.
health insurance companies are bureaucratic nightmares even with Obamacare. It's worse now than it was a year ago but we also have to look at why it's that way and start simplifying things, also start barring the health care industry from charging laissez faire prices for everything, that's the root cause here outrageous prices that outstrip inflation and have no bearing in reality. If healthcare is critical to an economy it's time to start regulating it and break up these damn health care/hospital consortiums that do nothing but eliminate competition and drive up costs. You have hospital administrators making over a million a year at some hospitials, how does that scale with what their service delivery is?
Last November I had to take my wife into the emergency room for a minor rash, It was a night so an urgent care facility wasn't open. Anyway for 30 minutes of work, doctor charged $1200, Hospital $1300 and all they did was give her the RX equivalent of of OTC meds, about $40, that's what the bill showed. Insurance covered most of it (fucking deductibles) but at most she was seen for no more than 5 minutes by the doctor. They even stuck on a $200 "after hours" fee on the bill, it's an emergency room for Christ sake! It's this kind of highway robbery that's killing the economy and single payer won't fix it, what'll fix it is for all of us to stop considering doctors/hospitals as above market forces and start some RICO law enforcement!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Duh, EVERYTHING costs more in the USA. That's why lotsa people buy stuff overseas. Our high cost of living is legendary. So why are U surprised when healthcare is $2X.
Single payer would get gov't involved, which is ALWAYS guaranteed to cost more or deliver less or deliver it waaaaay slower. The US Gov't cannot do FAST, CHEAP, and GOOD all at once. They just can't. The US military is FAST and GOOD, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. The US Post Office is Cheap and Good, but not necessarily fast, at least not at the cheap price.
Germany's payroll tax for healthcare purposes is 41%. Look it up. Want to be paying 41% of everything you make, from the 1st dollar up to the last, because of healthcare?
I pay $194/month as a retiree for former-employer-subsidized healthcare. I would expect that to go to about $1500 / month from a private company on the open market. Do I want my retirement reduced to deciding to pay the electric bill or affording my medicine due to the O'care high-deductibles? Nope. Leave this the hell alone, so I can have a good retirement.
Want to really help the American people? Pass the Fair Tax, which would put everyone back to work and they could then buy their own healthcare without the gov't getting involved in paying for it.
Germany's payroll tax for healthcare purposes is 41%. Look it up. Want to be paying 41% of everything you make, from the 1st dollar up to the last, because of healthcare?
You made the assumption. It's on you to provide the documentation.
I posted a factual explanation of the linkage between emploment and health insurance. I mentioned that FDR and Obama were both Democrats both because it's an interesting symmetry and to pre-empt any follow-up post by an uninformed partisan from trying to confuse the point. IF YOU BOTHERED TO READ what I posted you'd have noted that [1] I pointed out that both Republicans and Democrats tend to be too short-sighted to anticipate how the "real world" will respond to their policies AND [2] that I actually thought it was a good thing to sever the unnatural link.
I understand that you might be a Democrat who has become sensitive to people pointing out that utopian big government plays rarely turn out well (or even as anticipated) given thet Democrats are generally the party promising to grow government to solve every problem...... BUT the fact of the matter is that most Republicans in Washington are just as guilty of promising easy and perfect solutions to every human misery and pretending that THEIR favorite big government programs and policies will work better
I personally wish we had a REAL and significant party that actually believed in the small central government our founders gave us and the Constitution they handed down to us (something all the Republicans and Democrats in DC take an oath to uphold but more-frequently seem to just urinate on).
Motorola... isn't this the wonderful company (like also Apple) that makes smartphones, like Motorola Moto G 4G, with a Non-removable Li-Ion (2070 mAh) battery???
Meaning: they are making products to fail and make you buy a new one very soon! Motorola and Apple should close and shut-down their business, they are an "Environmentally Hazardous Company (TM)".
41%. See it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... It also supports their Social Security as well as the healthcare. Pretty steep.
I pay $194/month as a retiree for former-employer-subsidized healthcare....
Want to really help the American people? Pass the Fair Tax, which would put everyone back to work and they could then buy their own healthcare without the gov't getting involved in paying for it.
The "Fair Tax" sounds an awfully lot more fair when you're not spending 90% of your salary just to get by.
I don't think you've read and understood the Fair Tax. No poor person pays even a penny of Fair Tax. I'm right in the middle of the middle class, and would save $2K a year with the Fair Tax. Your taxes would probably be lower too.