Apple starts manufacturing iPhone 13 in India | Hacker News Reader

Apple starts manufacturing iPhone 13 in India

reuters.com

272 pointsnradov194 comments

Although this article paints this being about diversifying a China-heavy supply chain, Apple have been forced to ramp up manufacturing in India for many years now due to legislation that places enormous import taxes on selling products in India that are not manufactured in India. This isn't the first time they've moved some handset production to India due to the tax situation:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/18/apple-to-assemble...

Was India large part of their market?

Apple currently does not have much market share in India, but with a population of 1.38 billion people I'm sure they'd like to. They've been making iPhone SEs in India for a while now.

This report [1] says they ended calendar year 2020 with 2.4% market share and increased it to 4.4% in 2021.

[1] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/exclusiv...

With over a billion people, you don’t even need a massive market share to have a massive market.

> They've been making iPhone SEs in India for a while now.

They've been making 11s,12s in the same plant in the OP

The 13 production started only now.

Nope, They have a single digit percentage market share in India. Whether that is shipment or actual usage. So in order to have a lower price / import tax they need to start manufacturing more components in India.

I think this will be an interesting development. Give the high $-to-INR rate, and prices of apple products, it will always be a hard sell. Indian consumers won't be eager to spend multiple paychecks on iPhones and don't see Apple dropping prices. Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.

I am not sure why they are making this move, what are their goals for doing so.

India has a huge middle class even if it is a small part of its total population. iPhones won't be popular with tuktuk drivers, but a techy, no problem.

iPhone SE’s are also only $400 now in the US. That should be closing in on the price of other Androids in India.

That’s mid range. Budget phones can be less than 10000 Rs ($130), which is still about 1/3 the median monthly salary.

Apple is not just making for India, they have also started exporting. They have exported worth $1.4 billion, which may not be very large chunk for company as big as Apple, but Apple contractors are doubling down on India.

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/apples-big-bite-ex...

iPhones are ridiculously expensive in India because of the import taxes - a decent chunk of the population would be able to afford them if they were brought in line with the US prices.

Right now iphone 13 price on amazon is ₹73,990. US price before sales tax $799 which is ₹60,646. Add 18% GST which is charged even in product manufactured in India, you would get ₹71,562. So basically around 3% is charged as import fees.

Apple has a store in India:

https://www.apple.com/in/iphone/

iPhone 13 is listed as ₹69900.00 (920$) vs. $799 in the USA. The former includes taxes, so its only fair to add $80 to the latter (taxes in my state are 10%), so it is still around $40 difference, which isn't bad.

But it appears that the iPhone 13s sold in India today are already being produced in India. If that is the case, any secondary resalers on Amazon are going to take a loss if they imported the phones the hard way (though they could have just smuggled them in).

> vs. $799 in the USA

vs. $829 in the USA

799 includes carrier discounts. You get bank discounts in India which would get the price down to little over $800

iPhone 13 costs about the same as it would if you bought it in the US.

But 13 Pro is a different story It costs $1580 compared to $1099 (incl. tax) in the US. I guess they don't make iPhone 13 Pros in India

A correction - the price of Rs.69,900 is for the iPhone 13 mini. The iPhone 13 is listed at Rs.79,900 in the Indian Apple store (~$1,050 against $799 in the USA).

Ah, thanks, I wasn't careful enough.

The base sales tax, which is GST in India, is also a lot higher (18%) than the average in the US (guessing it would be around 8%). A decent chunk of the population would be able to afford iPhones only if Apple reduces prices drastically and the GST rate goes to 12% or 5%. Neither of these are likely.

I think it's more to do with average household income. Per capita a US citizen earn 10x that of an Indian citizen.

Many articles point out that Apple has moved to expand production outside of China.

>Apple is reportedly increasing device production in countries outside of China as part of a diversification strategy. iPad production will begin in Vietnam as early as mid-2021, according to a Wednesday report from Japanese financial publication Nikkei Asia. Vietnam will also help produce the HomePod Mini.

Apple is also reportedly hoping to bolster smartphone production India and smart speaker production in Southeast Asia. Most of the computer production will remain in China, according to the report, but some Mac Mini production will be relocated to Malaysia. Some Macbook production is also set to move to Vietnam as well.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-expanding-devi...

At the same time, they're also increasing their reliance on China[0] for piecemeal components. Specifically, their display, camera and storage has been pivoting to Chinese suppliers.

Assembly does seem to be moving out of China, but that was never the hard part (hell, assembly is even economically viable in the US). Their supply chain itself is a whole different story it would seem. From an economic and logistics perspective, Apple is now integrated deeper in China than ever before.

[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Apple-taps-more-...

Qualifying additional component suppliers is not quite the same thing as abandoning components made by companies like Sony and Samsung and pivoting to China.

>The Nikkei Asian Review says Apple is "aggressively testing" screens made by the Chinese company, as it considers taking on BOE as an OLED supplier to cut costs and reduce its reliance on Samsung, which is believed to be Apple's primary supplier of OLED displays.

Apple is seeking to diversify its supply chain as much as possible. The company often tries to secure at least two suppliers for any given component in order to reduce its supply chain risk and improve its bargaining position.

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/08/21/apple-aggressively-test...

That Chinese company, BOE, didn't manage to pass the necessary QC testing until late last year.

>The Beijing-based display maker began shipping a small number of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays for the 6.1-inch iPhone 13 in late September

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/13/oled-to-supply-oled-pan...

Yes. I wish they wouldn't. The potential danger of China having serious socio-governmental problems as a result of food shortages and policy collisions with Western powers is getting more significant every day. If Xi decides impending demographic collapse means taking Taiwan now is better than taking it later Apple and the rest of Western electronics giants could see their China access disappear overnight.

> Most of the computer production will remain in China

iMac are made in Thailand also (if not only)

China's supply chain is no longer price competitive. Apple and others have been looking at South East Asia for potential locations for years now.

The legislation that india created was just smart politics to ensure that these companies set up shop there.

It won't be competitive as lifestyle of China is growing. Its unfortunate that we can't have good stuff without exploitation (in today's context). I hope we can make leaps in manufacturing, so people from Asian country like India aren't exploited for shiny things like iPhone.

I believe same thing happened with Japan. As Japan grew rich, market in China started look attractive. And now, India is looking attractive. Looks like this vicious cycle will continue forever, as there will always be country with lax on human rights.

> Looks like this vicious cycle will continue forever, as there will always be country with lax on human rights.

If you are using Japan as an example, isn't there an eventual end to the exploitation once the country gets rich? In that case, the trade off should be worth it. The problem is if countries are exploited while not becoming becoming rich at the same time, like India during its colonial period. Not much good will come out of that.

While I kind of dislike sounding like a neoliberal, one person's exploitation is another's lifestyle upgrade.

Hopefully in a decade or two electronic manufacturing will start moving to Africa and ultimately helps accelerate industrialization.

The exploitation argument doesn't make sense. These economies have vast swarms of individuals doing nothing more than subsistence farming. Bringing manufacturing jobs to the region will do wonders for the local and the country’s economy.

Sounds like we have a solution for “encouraging” Apple and other manufacturers to start making things in the USA again…

Tarifs are not exactly a new or unknown concept to policymakers

Import substitution industrialization, as it's known, has been tried with pretty disastrous results in Latin America in the 1950s+, though South Korea and Taiwan pulled it off successfully, arguably. The idea itself is centuries old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial...

Think of the poor shareholders /s

I think there is also some legal limitations Apple wanted to overcome by manufacturing in India in order to operate their Apple Stores in India to directly sell to customers there without being forced to do merger with an Indian partner to sell their products.

Glad to see Apple make progress diversifying away from China.

China is just not reliable enough to be your sole supplier anymore. Fifteen years ago with the first iPhone it was low risk. Unfortunately governance has gotten more incompetent and more repressive over the last 10 years of the Xi era. There is also the small but real risk of a complete trade stoppage if China invades Taiwan.

I'm not sure how the party lost control enough to let Xi walk in as dictator, but as with Russia, Chinese politics is controlled by the whim of one man.

Not sure if you have seen this [1] amalgamation of several social videos, really the lockdown enforcement in Shanghai is not for the faint of heart.

[1] https://app.finclout.io/t/3rjOePV

Thanks for sharing that. I keep trying to figure out why China continues to lock down their cities since it hurts their economy so badly. Isn't the main driver in a need to remind the citizens who is in control? These case counts are so low...

My theory is that they don't have the medical infrastructure. In the video it is mentioned that some people caught Covid because the doctors were re-using swab-test.

Loyalty bought by incidental prosperity and fear, over a long period of time.

Not sure why you'd believe the Chinese state ever had a chance to avoid a personality-cult dictatorship. They might have adapted to block another Mao, but dictators arise in every system as do the suckers who believe in their self proclaimed righteousness.

The best way to deal with them seems comedic humiliation as they challenge others to serve for a bounded period of time.

China's leadership structures were revamped considerably (term limits, defined processes for succession etc) after Mao, precisely to prevent something like that happening again. And they worked well for a while, but unfortunately Xi managed to amass enough power to circumvent them and set himself up as dictator for life.

If China did something crazy that required Russia level sanctions on China, Apple would be hard over a barrel. You could have an Apple with nothing to sell but their existing, current inventory. They should be spreading out some manufacturing to hedge risk.

I think that it is incredibly unlikely the world could stomach Russia level sanctions on China so there may be a more muted response more focused on getting companies to more rapidly unwind their supply chains from China. Also, in the meantime there may be more proactive responses from the government to prevent this happening in other sectors (e.g. the Senator Casey/Cornyn outbound investment screening proposal)

https://www.casey.senate.gov/news/releases/casey-and-cornyn-...

yeah, I'm not even sure how long we can really squeeze Russia.

If we=USA then I think we can squeeze Russia forever, if we=USA/EU/West then indeed, it will be tougher to pull off

Yeah, more or less. Rising commodity prices will eventually hit Americans though and they may not be tolerant of this in the long term.

It may not even be a sanctions choice by the US. It could be that China decides that making Macs, iPhones, and iPads does not align with "common prosperity." They could make up a new law that says Apple devices need special export inspections, only available on February 30. It would have an outsized effect on the US Markets because Apple is such a large part of both the indexes (which grab headlines) but also their portfolios. (Either directly or through funds they hold). It's not going to cripple the US, but it would inflict pain. Most likely more pain than the Chinese leadership would feel.

Yeah, I'm highly skeptical that China would do that to one of the largest companies in the world, not because they probably couldn't withstand it, but because of the general market signal it would create. Sentiment is already turning or has turned negative on China but it's a big market so many companies persist, but imagine if the biggest company in the world can just be shut out? Many companies would probably stay, but it'd just be to milk what they can out of the market, I doubt any would really invest significant resources in China anymore.

What phone company or computer company would be able to build their product without their Chinese supply chain?

Russia aimed to be sanctions proof by having a largely self-sufficient industry. China aims to be sanctions proof by being critical in all supply chains. The US aims to be sanction proof by controlling the sanctions regime.

China doesn't make that many critical parts for phones.

Excluding Taiwan - does China have a monopoly on anything important beside assembly for Apple?

Samsung would not be screwed.

Batteries?

It’s not about parts but raw materials. It’s far more expensive to import materials, make parts and assemble post import than assemble everything at source and then export it.

Literally the vast majority of the critical mineral supply chain that is needed as inputs for most modern electronics, EVs, etc. although the US gov is finally waking up and doing something about it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

>What phone company

Samsung, on a relatively large scale and assembly in Vietnam.

Sony, their scale has lot more to do with them being incapable to competing in smartphone market.

Samsung has huge memory manufacturing in China.

The Chinese supply chain barely existed, relatively speaking, 20 years ago. It can be rebuilt the same way it was built: piece by piece. That’s what’s happening. Whether it’s a good thing geopolitically remains to be seen but diversifying does seem smart for the Apple.

> It can be rebuilt the same way it was built: piece by piece.

Not exactly. A huge part of what happened in China and made its industrial revolution possible was demographic: a lot of young, rural population that could (thanks to mechanisation of farming) now go off to the mega-cities and work in factories.

In contrast, the Western world does not have many young people any more and especially not many willing to work for shit wages... we could technically rebuild our supply chains domestically, but we won't have the population to staff the factories and the automation experience to automate them. Not to mention that an awful lot of what was "outsourced" were extremely dirty and polluting processes - the Silicon Valley is at the top of the Superfund sites count for a reason. Bringing these processes back home will require a lot of investment to ensure environmental compliance, or it won't be possible at all under the current environmental legislation.

Does the US necessarily need to rebuild the supply chain in the U.S.? Don't they just want a less antagonistic government? Could be Ethiopia (okay maybe not anymore), Nigeria, etc.

It will be done in Mexico. They have the young demographics and over the past five years, more and more manufacturing has been moving because of high Chinese labor costs.

Maybe. I worry that the situation in Mexico will continue to devolve and it'll be an impossible security risk for a multinational to operate anything that could be stolen, held hostage, etc. by a cartel.

Is your username a reference to the book Daemon? One of my favorite

That demographic advantage was twenty years ago. Today China has a terrible demographic structure—more old people than young people and a fertility rate well below replacement level. The One Child policy worked too well. And yes, much of the Western world has the same problem, but two notable exceptions are the United States and Mexico. We'll end up there eventually, but we've got some time.

I don't think all manufacturing will come back to the US. Much of it will go to South-East Asia and India as we're seeing in the article. And a bunch will surely end up in Mexico, which has lots of young people and an obvious geographical advantage.

But regardless of where they go, Apple really, really has to get out of China as quickly as possible. There are a lot of cracks showing in the Chinese system, and things could fall apart there very quickly. The demographics alone are staggering - the Chinese population could fall by half in the next 30 years, and the effects will be felt long before then.

What do you classify as "old" ? In 2021, about 62.5 percent of the Chinese population was between 16 and 59 years old.

> That demographic advantage was twenty years ago. Today China has a terrible demographic structure—more old people than young people and a fertility rate well below replacement level.

Indeed, and because it has waned and the supply of young people dried up, companies are already moving to Vietnam, India and probably, once China fixes up the infrastructure as part of the New Belt Road program, Africa.

The pace of productivity increases in manufacturing is increasing faster than pace of increase in demand. This is similar to what was happing in agriculture around 1900-1930 or so when 90% of the country farmed. When/if manufacturing comes back it will be much more automated, it will be much less labor intensive.

> What phone company or computer company would be able to build their product without their Chinese supply chain?

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa

Does any place outside of China manufacture electronic parts (resisters, capacitors, etc)? Even if Apple moved most of their manufacturing to India, I think they'd still be dependent on China (as would everyone else).

Yes. In fact the stuff you list doesn’t come from China at all but Indonesia. More complicated components come from Malaysia and Thailand, as do hard drives and the like.

"If"?

Like...forced sterilization and "re-education" camps for religious and ethnic minorities? https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/china-xin...

Spying on Uighers abroad and holding their innocent relatives at home hostage so that they will not agitate against human rights abuses? https://harpers.org/archive/2022/04/the-spies-next-door-uigh...

Or employing slave labor in factories in Western supply chains? https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale

I think the worst part is where they murder political prisoners by removing their organs to transplant them to rich people from abroad.

Horrible things have been going on in China for decades but nobody dares say anything because we are dependent on their manufacturing.

Woah, hadn't heard about the murdering political prisoners and doing transplants, can you share a link to where I can read more?

I think a reference to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve....

If your argument is that we ought to be much more harsh against China due to their treatment of their population, then yeah, that's fair. All the stuff you mention, and more, is pretty horrific and deserving of some kind of response.

However, historically, it doesn't seem like the imperial core enacts aggressive foreign policy purely for the benefit of the people in a country. Sanctioning China would be against the imperial core's geopolitical and financial interests at the moment, which means it won't happen, even though China's actions are ethically horrific. GP's "if" refers to if China does something which makes countries in the core actually sanction China.

If I'm wrong, please correct me, it would be interesting to see cases where the core enacts sanctions against its own geopolitical, ideological or financial interests in an attempt to benefit some suppressed group of people. I'm not an expert on the topic, just casually interested.

As with everything, there's nuance. But, yes, it's politically a lot harder to argue for sanctions that will have a significant effect on consumers/voters than those that will not.

Talk about being out of touch. The Uigher and Hong Kong propaganda was built for when Trump was around. It has disappeared now. When it was around, HN posts amplifying it got massive upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24879870

Even if Uigher thing is important for you for personal, professional or ideological reasons, you need to wait for the correct timing if you are to be heard.

It seems pretty inhumane to see the victimization of minorities in China purely through the lens of US domestic politics, but ok, sure. It’s not about the human rights issues, it’s about…upvotes from American HN readers?

Uighers in China are Muslims and like Muslims in many countries, they are groomed by the Middle Eastern allies of the US... with messages that align with the US interests. In China, that has meant creating unrest by fueling anti-government rhetoric and separatism.

China noticed this and decided to fix it the way they know how... and they have done an incredible job... so the only thing the west got out of it is crying "racism" to their clueless peasants.

Who would be hurt more by that? China or Apple?

Somewhat unrelated but ever since moving to Android (Pixel 5) I've totally lost track of the iPhone product line. If you asked me what the difference between the iPhone 11/12/13 is I wouldn't be able to tell you. I don't think I care either. Phones aren't making big leaps anymore, it's not worth keeping up with.

Basically true of all smartphones, now. I recently saw a giant billboard for Samsung S22. I doubt Samsung has had 21 prior versions of the S line, but who knows. These phones all look the same and have had looked the same for a handful of years now.

Samsung switched to using the current year for their model numbers. S22 is the 2022 model.

Thanks for clearing this up. Last year I was shopping for used phones and looking at S8/S9, and getting very confused when I saw S21 starting to pop up. "How many of these did they make, anyway?"

S10 was the last of the old numbering scheme, they changed it in 2020 (with the S20).

Tangentially related, Reminds me of this: In Los Angeles there's a few very prominently displayed billboards at a shopping center for the Galaxy S4 that has somehow remained up [1]

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/deKaDdMjM3U4P1Gb7

Every phone is nowadays a slab with a touch display so there hasn't been big surprises for a long time. Just gradual improvements and small new features once in awhile.

To follow the scene I've noticed it's easier to follow new iPhone releases than multiple brands of Android phones. They are still more or less the same although the specs are in many cases a notch higher in Android phones as the Android seems to be more resource hungry.

I got frustrated with the Samsung OS support (long time for new Android releases and no support for quite recent devices etc) and switched from SGS 9 to iPhone 13. Been switching between iOS and Android couple of times earlier and it's good way to avoid platform lock-in.

biggest change for me are folding phones! They look like the next big thing (but so expensive atm)

Have to agree here. Have the iPhone 11 Pro and still works great. Have worked with iPhone 12 and 13... honestly don't see any day to day difference in performance.

I've got the iPhone 6 ans it still works fine. :)

Although I sometimes wish I had the iPhone 6s so that I could update to the latest iOS version.

But iOS 12 still gets security updates every once in a while (last one — September 2021, and there were several last year) so I'm in no hurry to upgrade.

Perhaps come the next iPhone SE.

My fam has 4 iPhones: An 11 and 3 13's and we could also not tell you the main differences. Better uh... camera? Faster maybe? I know the 13's are chonky.

11 has the ridiculous rounded bezel, which makes it difficult to pick up, hard to handle in general and very easy to drop (it looks cooler though). Luckily, after years they've finally come to their senses and returned to the uglier, but 1000x more functional cornered bezel in 13.

Never had a problem picking up my 11 but then again it's barely spent a day outside of it's case.

Same. I stopped caring. I'll use my Pixel 4 until it is no longer supported.

If only the Pixel 6 had a headphone jack... :'(

5a does have one, but it is annoying that this only seems to appear on budget phones.

> I'll use my Pixel 4 until it is no longer supported.

So about 6 months to go?

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en

That's when the guarantees end. I'll buy the next phone the first security update that I don't receive.

This is how I think about computers. I don't think it's a problem or really points to anything.

I would love to hold old phone, the only issue that lingers me is battery. I have changed many battery, but it seems I will never get same display time ....

> Phones aren't making big leaps anymore, it's not worth keeping up with.

Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Apple has never been about revolutionary change after revolutionary change every year, but the iterative improvements do make big leaps over time. For iPhones, the cameras and photo quality improve a lot at least once every two or three years. It’s because you don’t care that you don’t know about the leaps, not the other way around.

As someone who went from an iPhone 7 Plus to a 13 mini, I see GP’s point. 13 mini is certainly a better phone. Better cameras, better battery life, bigger screen but smaller device. But I could see why someone would say this “isn’t worth keeping up with” and not “big leaps.” My 7 Plus photos were fine. It did everything I needed to do. On a daily basis the only benefit for me is that 13 mini is smaller.

It was definitely worth the price to me but I see why someone would say it’s not a big leap. And 7 to 13 is many years worth of upgrades.

You can't copy music onto the iphone with a USB cable connected to your computer.

Yes you can.

With any PC? It certainly doesnt work with linux or windows.

On a Windows machine you need iTunes to sync music and transfer files according to the docs. (You don’t need to use the iTunes store, but you do need the app to sync music). It’s been a while since I’ve used a windows machine of my own.

I doubt it works on Linux unless maybe it works with WINE.

Yeah wine doesnt work with USB. It's crazy you need iTunes (which is being discontinued) to copy music to a device you have access to and can connect to your computer. It's the only hold up I currently have to getting an iPhone. I have a lot of music that just isn't sold or available on any streaming platform that I'd like to copy over but I dont have a windows or mac available. I do have several linux machines available though. I bought a 13 Pro but had to return it. So bummed because Im over Google/Android.

I guess the only other solution would be to upload the files to iCloud Drive (not the music library) and play them with a third party app.

I checked that too, I couldnt find software that would import into the music library from iCloud either. Id be very interested if you know of one that works? I'll keep searching. Or if I wander into an extra $1000 bucks I can buy a mac soley for the purpose of getting music on my phone that I own.

> If you asked me what the difference between the iPhone 11/12/13 is I wouldn't be able to tell you

Well, let me assist. The 13 is way better than the 12, which is way better than the 11. The camera on the 13 is hands down the best camera yet on any mobile device and was sufficiently better that I and millions of others dropped a cool grand to get it. And guess what? If the 14 is better enough, I'll get that too, and be delighted about it!

I get that many phones are now "good enough" for the more basic use cases but that doesn't mean strides aren't being made in other dimensions. You might not care, but others sure do.

> The camera on the 13 is hands down the best camera yet on any mobile device

I have a Canon MKIV with several lenses (most of which are L glass), and consider myself a decent photographer. [1]

While the sensor size and resultant image data from my Canon vastly outperforms what my iPhone can do, the software processing Apple applies to photos leaves me significantly in awe when compared to my workflow that includes a beefy PC + Adobe Lightroom.

At this point, I am seriously ditching my entire DSLR kit, shooting nearly exclusively with my iphone, and possibly just picking up a medium format digital range finder to shoot travel landscapes.

1: https://alanroy.smugmug.com/

I'm in the same boat, albeit in the Sony camp, sitting on an embarrassing array of now pretty much unused kit. Like you, I'll still lug it along when "taking photographs" is an explicit part of the agenda, but in practise.. it hardly makes it out of the bag any more. The iPhone is just good enough, and it's there.

I honestly don't know what to do with the DSLR now. Maybe I'll point it out the window and live-stream the view.

“I've totally lost track of the iPhone product line. If you asked me what the difference between the iPhone 11/12/13 is I wouldn't be able to tell you.”

thanks for sharing!

// If you asked me what the difference between the iPhone 11/12/13 is I wouldn't be able to tell you

And the difference between the last 3 versions of android phones would be what?

The difference between the last 3 realme phones would be: a different camera, a different screen, a different brand of processor between each of these and they would have been released 3 weeks apart.

here you go, probably the same thing for iPhones

Mine has a folding screen.

I think the important thing, is whether this is e2e manufacturing or just assembly.

I mean if you can repair a phone yourself, you've got the skills to assemble a new one. What China has and what I guess India really needs, is the massive technical and logistics pyramid that the final assembly sits on.

Assembly is simply tariff avoidance - and maybe a nice puff-piece for politicians.

My understanding is that most of the important parts - the camera sensors, SOC, and memory are made mainly in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

Is this incorrect?

https://vdata.nikkei.com/en/newsgraphics/iphone-teardown/

The components are from all over the world.

Though China’s share is rising in particular with the inclusion of displays by BOE.

Apple have been manufacturing some iPhones in India for a while. I found out when there was a massive strike at one of their supplier's factories in 2020 (over unpaid wages). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india-wistron-idUSK...

I am a big fan of Apple products. I prefer the industrial and software design of their products over the competition. However, the popularity of the iPhone among normal folks outside tech circles is interesting to me. There is very little change year to year because Apple has to play it safe and wait for features to mature but somehow they manage to sell 200-300 millions of them every year. I checked and the average selling price of iPhones is around $850. No Android manufacturer comes even close.

I don't use Android phones but I have tried the recent Google Pixels, Samsung devices and other brands at the carrier store and they are great looking devices. The flagship iPhones don't stand out as much like they did 10 years ago.

I get it. The iPhone is probably the greatest product in human history. The iPhone has made Apple an invaluable brand. I am just shocked how much normal everyday love the iPhone and keep buying them every year.

Most iPhone users don't buy a new iPhone every year. But even the staggered schedule results in new demand every year, even if people are only buying every 3-4 years.

I think it's not just about the iPhone, it's about the ecosystem. iPhone, iPad, airpods/pro/max, airtags, apple watch, macbooks / handover. Even things like Apple Music and Apple TV and Apple News synced across devices (which I don't use).

I thought airpods pro were overpriced and not worth it until I got a pair. Coincidentally, I never stuck with using wireless headphones until I got a pair of airpods pro. They make a bunch of the annoying things around wireless just go away. That's what Apple does well.

If you buy into the whole ecosystem you get a lot of convenience features that are hard to recreate piece-meal (and certainly there are network benefits - i.e. Airdrop, iMessage).

I am fed up of the changing UI patterns on Android Phones. Need to keep re-training my Dad on them. The iPhone UI has been mostly sane and consistent in contrast.

The Apple PR machines at work again. "Tries to reduce reliance on its Chinese supply chain." Wait until you see BOE OLED on your iPhone and YTMC NAND for storage.

Appel started work on this a long time ago to avoid import tax and some other tax benefits. This along with many other Chinese brands assemble their phone in India to try and compete in the 2nd ( or largest ) market by population.

But credit's where credits are due their virtue signalling are working extremely well.

I think the BOE displays are already in the iPhone 13 (not pro).

It’s entirely possible for one action to have multiple legitimate motivations behind it.

That's not the point of the parent's comment. They're saying that Apple is contradicting themselves by claiming that they need to reduce their reliance on Chinese labor while simultaneously sourcing more of their BOM from Chinese companies. That makes it very hard to take their claims here at face value.

BOE OLED, YTMC NAND, CXMT RAM, LiDAR from Robosense Chipset fabbed in SMIC foundry, data center in Hangzhou and core iOS developed by Shanghai team.

A man can only hope so much.

How can I make sure that the model I buy in US is made in India, not China?

Here is an old tweet that answers that:

https://twitter.com/sjosephburns/status/1188443530085224448

The phone in the tweet is "Assembled in India" different from "Made in India"

Why does it matter?

$AAPL is insuring profits by moving from state controlled labor to third world labor to ensure westerners get the latest phones

And, the worst thing is there has already been one bad incident in Apple factories, in India. The workers were treated so badly, given shit food, bad place to sleep and were given no salary, they started to strike. I hope such ruckus will make us consider how the "bigtechs" exploits people life for profit.

To be fair I believe the fuck-up was caused by local employee and admin not some conspiracy in Palo Alto or Taipei.

Two of reason why it's cheaper to ship parts into Third world country, then produce in Third world country and ship it again across the world into "First world country" is the lack of employee and environmental protections. The desire to save a few bucks is not a conspiracy.

Its not fair when you don't consider the premise of choosing third country to manufacture their iPhone. They intentionally choose third country, because its cheap. And, we know to be cheap there should be lax on human rights and environmental issue. Otherwise, they why don't they just manufacture in the USA?

Is the Indian manufacturing industry for phones on par with China’s yet?

Unlikely, considering China has a headstart of several decades in electronics and consumer devices production. Not to mention a centralized, completely tuned governance and infrastructure policy for massive industries as against India's federal democratic government that has been mostly anti-capitalist until the 21st century.

No. It is mainly assembling products for which processes have been stabilized. Last time Apple did in India it was huge ruckus, with factory owner not paying workers for months, housing facilities and so on. This time hopefully it should be better.

It would be small plant to cover some sales for high income people in low income countries. To put in perspective it is about ~5 million / year Iphones sales in India. In China that number is 7 million Iphones / month.

This is great - we have to diversify away from China such that we can "turn them off" like we have done to Russia if they do something as crazy as Ukraine.

When they "do something crazy" then TSMC isn't there any more. Can they manufacture iPhone without TSMC?

India is in an interesting position right now. They're riding the fence on relations with their old friend Russia and should benefit from access to below market rate oil and other resources. Provided they don't get sanctioned too, which I think is unlikely, they should see some economic growth. How that works out in the middle of a global slowdown is anyone's guess .

iPhone 13 production halted due to <flooding/corruption/electrical outage/internet outage/local elections/bands of roving monkeys/cow wandering in to production line/logistics failure> - The next headline

Should have been sone in USA as well. Prepare for the worst. India like china vote along side with Russia and take oil from it.

What if …

Unless we cannot sanction everyone and hence … Russia continue to have money to bomb whichever it fancy.

It will a moment am not going to buy iphone again..

Why not in the USA? Would it be to expensive?

Why not make the iPhone in America? A lot of Americans finance their phones with their contract.

They would not even notice the price increase by making the phone domestically.

It would be more expensive regardless if they paid on a contract or paid for it outright. Maybe many wouldn't notice but others absolutely would.

I would love an option to chose either America (or a similar Western country) or India/China. People who are willing to pay more for made in the west can and those don't care can go cheaper.

Plus the security community would really pay more for a domestically built device with stronger guarantees of no tampering

Product decisions are simply not made that way. The security community is too small to be a relevant target market for a mass-market device.

For those in the security community who put their money where their mouth is, there are communication devices with various supply chain controls in place.

I think we just don't have the infrastructure to build the iPhone, it would be astronomically more expensive unless they essentially just did the assembly of parts here. The Mac pro being built in the US seems to be mostly assembly of parts made overseas, and iPhone assembly is much trickier and finicky.

America doesn't have enough Uighur labor to exploit.

Would you pay 2-3x more for your next phone?

> Would you pay 2-3x more for your next phone?

Why wouldn't he? These are already luxury items... I wouldn't, but I wouldn't buy an iphone at first place.

The rest of the world might notice the price increase.

And if the price increases too much, it might be reduce the market share from overseas even further.

The largest American company is completely dependent on China. How this was allowed to happen is beyond me.

Try largest company in the world (AFAIK)...

Saudi Aramco at >$8T

Saudi Aramco is not notable because it is simply a consequence of clerical designation. There is no innovation, or large scale coordination comparable to another company, not even Exxon or Shell.

> large scale coordination

I agree with the innovation part (for some narrow definition of innovation at least), but not sure why you think drilling and shipping billions of tons of products requires no large scale coordination. Just looking at their wiki page, they operate hundreds of oil fields.

I guess negotiated business relationships would be a better word than cooperation? They have half of their equation (all their inventory) gifted to them by the king of their country.

That’s 8T Saudi riyals, which is a little over 2T USD. Apple is bigger at 2.7T.

"allowed to happen"? Do you think the government should tell companies where they can manufacture?

If it's a national security concern -- absolutely. Apple isn't just a company.

Just dropped this in another comment but sharing here too. Some people apparently do (and actually have for a long time for national security stuff, but with the increasing dual-use nature of tech I think the idea of what should be considered critical or not is expanding). The bill below is probably the best articulation of some political thoughts on the subject of outsourcing supply chains. https://www.casey.senate.gov/news/releases/casey-and-cornyn-...

Depending on goods and services they provide. In case of high tech manufacturing- absolutely.

Furniture is an example where we should care much less.

Our law and freedom ends where the border begins.

"allowed to happen"? Do you think the government should tell companies where they can manufacture?

Even without government intervention, a good CEO should know better than to put all of his company's eggs in one basket, whether that's an individual nation, or a single parts supplier.

Apple's massive growth in services would somewhat insulate it from a locked-out-of-China scenario. At least long enough to establish diverse manufacturing elsewhere.

As an Apple shareholder, for years I've been repeatedly disappointed with Mr. Cook's swooning and fawning over China. Not just for political and social reasons, but because he put the company and its future in jeopardy chasing Chinese manufacturing trends for short-term dollars. I want a CEO with long-term vision, who makes the company resilient so it'll keep producing revenue longer than the next three months.

Why? If something pops off in Asia, Apple can cry to the US govt for a handout to manufacture elsewhere. Intel is only building fabs in the US because of government subsidies.

So you can outsource everything for profit and then get the government to pay to bring them back. Rinse and repeat.

Because even if the government does come to your rescue (not guaranteed), you're going to have a multi-year to multi-decade impact on revenue, performance, and other metrics while you ramp up again. You don't just dial 1-800-FACTORY and a new iPhone plant gets delivered the next day.

Why build the potential company-wide recession into your business plan?

You may have to wait for the new Apple CEO.

https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

> "allowed to happen"? Do you think the government should tell companies where they can manufacture?

Do you think Apple is allowed to manufacture in Iran? The government is already telling companies where they can or cannot manufacture.

Frankly, probably? There are strategic interests in not allowing overly centralized control of manufacturing in potentially hostile powers. Corporations literally exist at the sufferance of the state that granted their charter; conditioning their operations in the interest of that state doesn't really bother me, personally.

(And yes, that means that other countries in which a multinational has operations can do the same thing. If you look at China--they already do.)

Seems simple enough when the mantra is Profit before risk.

If companies such as Apple would also consider softer things like Human Rights, a lot would be different.

But companies will always do what brings in the most profit, such as the creative Latvian blend by Shell:

https://frontierindia.com/shell-to-buy-russian-oil-blend-lat...

If companies actually gave a shit about climate risks down the line and developed significantly different ways on how to reduce co2 emissions this would not be an issue. As it stands, the world is forced to import and consume an insane amount of oil to keep the lights on. As far as I can tell no one says anything about what's happening in Nigeria regarding human rights violations so I guess who is to say about the victims who happen to not have fair skin.

I look around and see lots of people buying pickup trucks and SUVs with 4L+ engines for casual use, 3k+ sq ft houses for 3 or 4 people, and flying to Hawaii for vacation. None of it seems forced.

The world rewards the companies that give them what the world wants.

Most places don't import and consume much oil to keep the lights on. Worldwide only a small fraction of electricity production comes from burning petroleum products.

Now that you bring up Nigeria, i am not sure skin color is the number one issue.

According to [1] and [2] there are problems in the south-east and to some degree also south-west.

Nigeria is right now divided into 50% Muslim and 50% Christian and it looks like the Christian part of the country in the South is unhappy with that.

I could very well be wrong here, but it seems to be too much of a coincidence.

[1] https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/467985-nigeria...

[2] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/niger...

> How this was allowed to happen is beyond me.

America does not have the same interest in industrial manufacturing that China does, simple as that. If we wanted to shift 100% of iPhone production to the US, how long would it take to spin up that kind of capacity? Is it even possible?

And how much would they cost?

> Is it even possible?

The fact that this is even a question (that I also don't know the answer to) is indicative to me that we should find out. Being wholly reliant on a foreign nation for something as ubiquitous as chips should be seen as a potential security risk. Not in a handwavy 'privacy' context, but in one that it severely limits options should there be a disagreement.

>Is it even possible?

Of course it is possible. It would take some time and money, but if Apple wanted to do it they could. There are plenty of places that could use good jobs and have manufacturing experience like the Appalachia region.

US defense industry does a lot of in house, domestic electronics manufacturing.

I think something else is up with Apple not wanting to do production in the Americas

You can absolutely build electronics in the US. China just does it cheaper, quicker, and in higher volume.

Apple cares more about these things and less about where manufacturing happens.

The military cares less about these things and more about where it happens.

Ah yes, the US defense industry is well-known for being cost efficient and meeting deadlines

Apple tried very hard to manufacture their products in the US and nearly went broke. They transitioned to manufacturing overseas because they needed to be competitive to survive. Right now this means China but with the cost of doing business there going up most of this production is likely to move to Vietnam.

Broke in terms of labor or material costs?

Or could Americans just not manufacture Apple products?

Consumers demand low prices. Even with lots of automation manufacture in the US made both Apple Macs and NeXT cubes impractically expensive.

>The largest American company is completely dependent on China

uh. that's is not correct. if you watch any Apple tear down. there are a lot of components that's not made in China for example the chip are made by TSMC, screen is made by Samsung...etc.

Strong economic coupling prevents war. Hurrah for ultra globalized economy!

Having said that it is quite amusing that now American in general and even HN in particular starts hating globalization when as late as a few years ago they couldn't stopped ramming globalization into everybody's mouth. Now when some of them starts getting their foot in the system you got Trump and MAGAs.

> Strong economic coupling prevents war. Hurrah for ultra globalized economy!

This is why the whole history of, say, Europe involves almost no wars between neighbors with large amounts of trade just before the war, right?

Not strong enough, they don't put their moneyed folks and multinational CEOs as the stakeholder in the state. I'm sure they will be more level headed than some jaded Junkers. Pretty sure they would understand that it's a waste of wealth and time to cater some commotion in the Balkan.

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