It's all about protectionism.
Apple should threaten to move the manufacturing of the iPhone out of China, laying off 100s of 1000s of people.
Apple should threaten to move the manufacturing of the iPhone out of China, laying off 100s of 1000s of people.
Foxconn, Apple's primary manufacturing partner in China, is opening factories in India. It looks like Apple's trying to diversify away from its dozen or so Chinese factories.
Apple's talked about bringing more manufacturing back to the U.S., but so far apparently has not done very much of that, perhaps waiting until after the elections to see what the political climate is like in 2017 and beyond.
Apple's foundational competitive advantages over anyone else in the West lie in unique manufacturing and supply chain capabilities that largely reside in China now. Those advantages enable the marketing strategies.
Robotic manufacturing will eliminate most of those jobs within 10-20 years. China already has half a billion people with no jobs available to them, that are pretending to work as subsistence farmers currently. The labor will always be cheap, it's the politics that will become extremely expensive. Apple should get started on moving off of that labor while they still have the vast financial capabilities to do so.