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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.
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.'"
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!
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.
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*
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)
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.
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.
In Republican controlled Texas?
It doesn't matter. Unions are a right-wing bogeyman that gets blamed regardless of any rational analysis of their effect, or even whether they exist. For table thumping rhetoric, a really good bogeyman needn't b real. All you have to do is get a few million people to reflexively parrot it. This avoids the trouble of actually thinking, which makes some people's heads hurt.
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"
41%. See it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... It also supports their Social Security as well as the healthcare. Pretty steep.