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Comment by greglindahl | Hacker News Reader

Almost all of the high-value parts of an iPhone are made in the US. Yet there is a lot of hand-wringing about the low-value, labor-intensive work done on iPhones in China.

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Screen&flash- South Korea, CPU - TSMC(Taiwan), frames - China.

Which high value part are you talking about is made in us?

The software, I would presume. The Snow Crash quote "America makes movies, music, and microcode" has never seemed more true.

I would bet Apple uses offshoring development sites like any corporation on the same league.

Not sure I make the same bet. Generally you don't outsource your core competencies. Design and software are Apple's core competencies. Assembling hardware is not.

You might be surprised how many core competencies are done by the major consulting firms.

Offshoring doesn't necessarily mean outsourcing.

Which ones? Screen, flash memory, CPU, DRAM, battery come to mind. All of these product types are also manufactured in the US, but not the majority of the output.

I think they're referring to a graph similar to this I've seen over the years (bottom of the page) https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2014/05/22/china-a...

The ones I've seen never show the US as the biggest slice, but China is always a sliver and the chart is usually dominated by Germany, South Korea, and Japan.

Exactly. And that analysis is of components, so it leaves out the value of ecosystem, software, and Apple’s cpu and SoC design groups, which is bigger than all of the components combined.

Which parts are you talking about?

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