iPhone maker Wistron quits, saying Apple didn't let it make a profit

They might just as well change their sources now, or after 2025. The trillions are already in their banks; the children that mined until now are dead or close to; we, the consuming public, have been compromised because we like shiny toys (I own quite a few Apple products, at least a dozen children, they are so frail, must have been murdered to manufacture them); all is great. All that's left is to think of a truly unimaginable science fiction story: a $2.7+ trillion company is found guilty for the death of one single child and the company is dissolved.

If they succeeded (many didn't, ending in bankruptcy), the supplier was now trapped: no one could offer Walmart levels of volume, which the supplier now had to operate at to make a profit. Walmart could come back next year and demand lower prices. They famously joked amongst themselves that their goal was to drive out all profit for their suppliers.

Vlassic Pickles is the classic example of a company that took the offer, rebuilt themselves, and became massively larger than they were before.

I worked at a manufacturer for several years in IT. Walmart was a customer, but only in a limited way (i.e., without requiring huge volumes and service levels[0]). Our main competitor, Rubbermaid, was a tier 1 supplier. When Rubbermaid's main factory in the segment burned down, Rubbermaid withdrew from Walmart as a supplier, citing low profit margins. We got the call to come to Bentonville, where they offered us the chance to replace Rubbermaid, which would mean a fundamental restructuring of our entire operation to service them. We (wisely) declined.

[0] An example of the service level required: Walmart would send an order by EDI that would include a two hour window for delivery, 24 hours out, for a store. That meant you had to have inventory and drivers within a certain distance from every Walmart location so that you could immediately pick the order, get it on a truck, and arrive at the store within that two hour window.

He was wrong though, it appears, no? I mean one could argue that there would be more wars without globalism (I'd counter argue there would be less weapons) but one cannot say "globalism prevents wars" in general.

There's absolutely a big push to keep employment laws as well as other laws „flexible“. And keep salaries as low as realistically possible. Otherwise MUH INVESTORS will go somewhere else. To be fair, it's not (just) foreign investors. Local elite is making $$$ providing support to incoming companies. Real estate moguls, construction companies, subcontractors etc.

Ultimately it is a race to the bottom to appease the sacred investor and let local elite enrich themselves.

High focus and high intensity is not sustainable over duration. Performance degrades over time without recovery.

You can argue (and I will argue) that Apple's skill at squeezing their suppliers while still maintaining reliable supply chains is a huge part of why they're the biggest company in the world (and also why Tim Cook and not Scott Forstall or Jony Ive succeeded Jobs). That squeezing has real human costs, which Apple is insulated from.

They've outsourced the majority of their labor (and related liability) to a global cadre of high-volume, low margin suppliers, while capturing most of the value created by that labor by owning the Apple brand and maintaining tight control of information, resulting in an asymmetric risk/reward profile for Apple inc.

Large companies who've already scaled up their products are more incentivized to focus on cost cutting.

If Apple did not over-pay their suppliers, the M1 would not have been manufactured on the 5nm node.

I recall someone who had several on-site RedHat engineers at his company, doing some kind of Linux work. The company missed one Friday payment to RedHat. Every single RedHat engineer was gone the following Monday, never to return.

Why would you think that? There's no need to think that at all when considering the actions of Apple.

Haha yep, I've heard similar stories in Vietnam as well. Idk why but Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean management culture is absolutely atrocious compared to Japanese+SK management culture. All of them share equally shitty work cultures, but at least the Japanese+SK ones actually tried to train people from scratch. I really don't know why Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean companies don't do that as well.

> always felt like matter of time before audit/tax or political shenanigans drive foreign electronics assemblers out and eventually consolidate under India champions

Ehn, India's a federal system so financial+political shenanigans are highly dependent on the state's political and business culture.

It's the same in PRC ofc, with the administration in Guangdong/Zhejiang/Fujian being much more competent than the administration in Yunnan, Hunan, or Hubei.

That said, knowing about these intricacies requires cultural domain experience, which can only be acquired by training+hiring locally, or working with local players.

> I remember numbers last year that 2500/12000 registered forreign companies closed Indian operations since mid 10s, so maybe it's time for India chaebols to take over

I'd be curious about the breakdown by nationality.

After the Doklam standoff in 2017, Indian Federal Regulators began cracking down on Chinese FDI severely (which before 2018 was one of the largest FDI inflows India received), which lead those firms to divest their operations to Indian, Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese corporations.

For example, Xiaomi India's operation was originally run from Mainland China itself, but they were forced to sell their India operation to a Taiwanese-Indian consortium, so the only Chinese thing left of Xiaomi India is just the name.