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Microsoft Manufacturing Surface Hub In the US
overThruster writes: According to the New York Times, Microsoft has chosen to manufacture its Surface Hub in Wilsonville, Oregon. The announcement follows Apple’s decision to build the Mac Pro in Texas. "It makes a lot of sense to manufacture in the U.S.," said Steve Hix, an entrepreneur who founded several Portland-area tech companies, including one that had a manufacturing facility in Wilsonville. "The key issue is quality."
Wow, some stuff is getting manufactured, in the nation with the largest manufacturing economy!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Well, if they use Amazon as a model, a lot of "those cars" for employees will be employees walking or biking to work.
Adapt. Roads were made for bikes and streetcars in most US cities, not for cars.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Since Chinese manufacturing requires a pretty high volume of sales to pay off, m$ gains good pr by keeping it on this side of the Pacific. Not impressed
The key word is manufacture. Call me a cynic but I seriously doubt M$ is going to manufacture much in the US.
To the best of my knowledge only Japan, China and Korea have the plants to make most of the components and I can't find any evidence that there are plans to set up the facilities in the US.
It does seem that the screen itself (multiple 8x3' acrylic sheets with LED inserts around the edges) will be US made - so I guess that justifies the proposed "made in" label (and government funding?). From the referenced news (fluff) article (emphasis mine):-
The product is so unusual — representing one of the largest touch screens of its kind — that Microsoft could not find existing assembly lines in Asia to build it on, the company said.
One reason Microsoft’s factory is in Wilsonville, a city of about 21,000 about 20 minutes south of Portland, is that the Surface Hub originated at a start-up called Perceptive Pixel, which Microsoft acquired in 2012. The start-up had an assembly plant in Wilsonville for its giant touch-screen device
Although many components in the product will come from overseas, the Surface Hub will be stamped with the phrase “Manufactured in Portland, OR, USA.
And yeah - the "can't find existing Asian assembly lines big enough" is a bit of a deliberate furphy as assembly lines are built to suit the order - in this case they're just using the existing Perceptive Pixel assembly lines (which makes sense, as they bought the company which includes it's assets). Guess we'll wait and see. If it stays in the US it'll be interesting - especially seeing how they deal with the tax on the income.
$700 million per quarter in Surface sales. We'r'e talking 900,000 units or so every three months.
It's not iPad numbers, but I'm pretty sure that 3.5 million units a year and over $2billion in sales is more than "ultra low volume". That's enough volume to look into potential cost-savings.
Are you more impressed when a company just moves production to China?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The negative spin is that an American company opening a factory in the United States is front page news.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The OP was talking about the ultra-low volume of the Surface Hub, meaning the new giant ones costing between $7k and $20k. Those won't be selling very many. That's right in the title.