Samsung already makes most of their phones in Vietnam. Not a huge difference, other than the lack of tariffs.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/12/why-samsung-of-sou...
https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/12/why-samsung-of-sou...
Also when we say "make" I assume we mean "assembles".
Somewhat anecdotally I recently purchased a laptop and tried to find one that wasn't made in China and it was nigh on impossible.
I've been to Hai Phong, which is the city in the north near the China border where most of this commerce happens. It is fascinating to see how big the houses are there. If you drive along the road to the airport it is literally filled with old men riding their nice shiny new bicycles and exercising by the side of the road.
The tariffs definitely have people looking into Vietnam a lot more. I've driven (motorbike) the dirt backroads near the Chinese border where there is nothing but trees and mountains. There are literally trucks brining goods into and out of Vietnam (illegally) on hastily constructed dirt roads. You can see it in google maps even. I've seen how people have strung cables over rivers between China and Vietnam to ferry goods back and forth. So yea... it is happening, it just isn't hitting the news much. It is also happening in Cambodia and Laos. Look into the roads China is building and how Sihanouk is a literal Chinese eco disaster.
Fascinating times...
There are also illegal but protected casinos near the Vietnam-China border entry, that only allow in Chinese nationals.
I also drove into Laos near the north side and all through it as well. The amount of Chinese influence in Laos is overwhelming.
Also who knows how long Samsung has been working on such things.
Samsung had been irrelevant in China for some years now, like below 1% market share. It just can't compete
US is by far the only market that Chinese phones haven't dominated, but that is for a reason. Buying an Android in US there has surprising limited choices, Samsung/OnePlus/Pixel in that Order, and that is it. It is Duoploy either Samsung or iPhone, and others don't play.
Adding Huawei+Xiaomi+Oppo+Vivo alone counts 45% of the world smart share already, by units, and the others consisting ZTE/Lenovo and other Chinese brands as well. Safe to say the Chinese phones are already 50% of all phones shipped.
Yes, it is pretty dominating. Had not for the Trump ban, Huawei would probably dethrone Samsung in EU as well, according to analysis in Feb
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224614/huawei-chinese-p...
As a gadget enthusiasts, though overall the phone innovation is slowing down, but at least Chinese brands are the fewer left there to churn out marketable features, like those monstrous cameras and tricks to hide it. Apple and Samsung are just being lazy there, with incremental upgrade which command a premium
So Chinese phone manufacturers making up 1/3 of the European market, as per your link, is them dominating it??? Chinese phones don't dominate worldwide in the sense of geography. They dominate worldwide in the sense of units because they are the low margin, budget phone manufacturers supplying lower income parts of the world. Not a bad place to be, but doesn't remotely support your assertion above that the US is the only market they don't dominate. That's obviously wrong just from your own sources.
Considering that a lot or most of the iPhones and Samsung phones sold (well, before the moving out) were also made in China, yes. The 1/3 you mention are just the Chinese brands....
Samsung was basically saved from being overtaken by Huawei as #1 by Trump's ban.
Of course their displays and RAM are probably made in Korea or China as are the SSDs and I've never pulled one apart to check the motherboard and battery providence...
However they are definitely assembled in Japan.
It would have been fascinating to study Japan in the 80's, but now really sure they are still "self-sufficient."
Japan's auto industry is still strong, but their future largely depends on impending trade deal with Trump. Their tech/semiconductor industry has been in decline the past 30 years and what little remains today are being sold to Chinese/Taiwanese companies bit by bit. Japanese brands like SONY or Panasonic now accounts for less than 10% of the US market now, replaced by mostly Koreans like Samsung and LG in high-end, and by Chinese by TCL in low-end markets. The consumer camera business is still dominated by Japanese companies, but the business itself is in a crisis as the market, which peaked in 2013, continues to dive by 30% - 60% annually last several years.It would have been fascinating to study Japan in the 80's, but now really sure they are still "self-sufficient."
Japan's auto industry is still strong, but their future largely depends on impending trade deal with Trump. Their tech/semiconductor industry has been in decline the past 30 years and what little remains today are being sold to Chinese/Taiwanese companies bit by bit. Japanese brands like SONY or Panasonic now accounts for less than 10% of the US market now, replaced by mostly Koreans like Samsung and LG in high-end, and by Chinese by TCL in low-end markets. The consumer camera business is still dominated by Japanese companies, but the business itself is in a crisis as the market, which peaked in 2013, continues to dive by 30% - 60% annually last several years.
Well, it's a bit more than that. While Samsung imports many parts and "assembles" all final products in Vietnam, there are also 200 suppliers and contractors who relocated and "make" their parts in Vietnam.
Vietnam in pre-Samsung era was largely known for low-tech textile export. There wasn't a lot of infrastructure to support Samsung's smartphone operation in Vietnam. Samsung not only had to work with the Vietnamese gov't to create the industrial infrastructure that didn't exist, but the company also had to convince suppliers/contractors to set up shops in Vietnam.
Samsung's products now accounts for about 1/3 of Vietnam's overall export.
It's better than Laos/Cambodia, but the streets are now flooded with cars far more than even 1 year ago, and the traffic is becoming a huge issue.
And right now, with all the new factories, Vietnam is suddenly almost as polluted as China. (Just recently we have record AQI numbers here.) But of course rich countries don't care about that, as long as the phones are cheap...
All in all, people are happy, since it helps their bottom line. But the infrastructure is not there yet to beat China.
Rich countries can help: for example Western companies can mandate that all their suppliers, for their entire chains, down to natural resources, have low levels of pollution.
Vietnam and other countries like it will have to comply, in order to sell their products.
Nike stopped using child labour because of (Western) public outcry, without it they'd go for the factory offering the cheapest price. Next you'll say, then it's up to the Vietnamese to have a public outcry about pollution. But corrupt governments seem to have a way to get away with anything, just look at the Dakota pipeline, or arctic drilling...
Samsung is an extreme vertically integrated company. As far as I am aware there isn't any other company on the planet that is remotely close to this level of integration. Not even Cargrill.
Samsung doesn't just make Display, NAND/ DRAM / Battery, Assembly, Controllers, MEMS, SoC, Foundry but also down to the Chemicals and Materials as well as actual assembly. Think of it as 80% of the whole Shenzhen Ecosystem.
So while other companies have difficulties moving off that Shenzhen Ecosystem, the reality is Samsung was never part of it. Samsung Mobile is the front line to drive all volumes for each of its subsidiary to a sustainable level, before these subsidiary graduate to start selling to third parties. For Samsung, it is only a matter of government signing an agreement to tariffs, clean water, electricity and all these basic infrastructure. And if the government have trouble getting those up, not to worry, you could paid Samsung and Samsung will built those for you ( Samsung is also a construction company ) and promise to hire enough local workers.
This is in deep contrast to Apple which doesn't actually own any part of the supply chain.
My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy S5 and I was surprised to find out that it was made in Korea. Manufacturing in Korea certainly didn't seem to harm Samsung's financial prospects back then, and the phone wasn't any more expensive than its Made-in-China competitors. I have zero reservations about South Korea's workers' rights protections, workplace health and safety, and environmental regulations.
Too often the discussion becomes:
1. We shouldn't manufacture in China
2. We can't afford to manufacture in US/EU
3. Let's just manufacture in Vietnam/Cambodia/Myanmar instead
When it should be:
a. We shouldn't manufacture in non-democratic countries
b. Let's manufacture in democratic countries instead
Samsung is a Korean company so it's not that weird that they should manufacture things there.
Well, Samsung only just apologised last year to workers for some unusually high rates of cancer among workers at its (local) semiconductor and display factories[1]. It took ten years or more to go through the Korean courts. In general, Korea's industrial death/injury rates are very high compared to Western countries.[2] Workplace health for workers in Korea's electronics industry in general does not appear great, to say the least.[3] Finally, Samsung's treatment of workers in its Vietnam factories is, by most accounts, subpar at best.[4]
I live in Korea and I've been here for about four years. (Note that if we were to cover something outside tech/electronics, like construction, the workplace health and safety situation in Korea would appear even more dismal). I think I've dumped enough links already, but without adding more I will agree that legal protections for workers are quite strong in Korea at the base level, but they are often blatantly disregarded or skirted around by employers.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/samsung-electronics-a...
[2]https://www.ft.com/content/57c76820-d3f0-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d...
[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25938673
[4]https://ipen.org/news/samsung-workers-line%c2%a0unique-repor...
Some things that I think are good about Korean labour law/rights:
-No at-will employment: employers must have a solid reason for firing somebody (misconduct, financial loss, crippling lack of company funds). In practice, this is often skirted through social pressure, i.e. employees encouraged openly to quit, or having their working lives turned into quiet hells until they quit to get away. If a person is fired they must be given either 30 days' notice or 30 days' salary.
-"Pension"/severance pay: all full-time workers accumulate a month's salary for each year worked at a company. Legally this must be paid out within 14 days after leaving a position. My own (Western) country has nothing like this, and I think it's especially good for the Korean context where a person might work for LG, Samsung, or Hyundai for twenty years, then be eased out right when their kids are starting university. Often, they can't find other whitecollar jobs. Every second or third cabbie I talk to in Seoul used to work for one of the big Korean firms. So the severance gives people a bit of a buffer if they randomly get fired or have to quit.
-Strong state-funded healthcare and social safety net.
Two less-good things:
-Koreans famously work some of the longest hours in the OECD, and it's usually overtime that people find it impossible, culturally, to say no to. The government legislated against it this year (all work beyond 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week to be defined as overtime, with time and a half paid for overtime and a maximum of 12 extra hours per week allowed) so hopefully things are going to slowly change there. In practice, people still seem to be working tons of overtime (for which they should be paid extra) without reporting it, but the law is still new.
-Minimum number of leave days per year is around 11-12 for the first year of employment and could be higher. In practice, corporate culture often limits peoples' freedoms around when they can take leave. Lack of separate sick days is common: people have to either use a leave day, or work sick.
1. Every country is susceptible to change government at any time
2. Corporations are in the game for profit, everything else is a kind of nice to have
I've seen this first hand in Ludhiana, India. I know the narrative from the Nike sweat shop days still holds, but large brands are very aware of the backlash they could face and make efforts to improve working conditions wherever they can. If you're a worker in say, India, you're better off working at a factory affiliated with Ikea than one selling to local brands.
People say they support human rights and environment, but then they still go for the price.