Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier

nytimes.com

16 points·perihelions··7 comments

This is going to be the ultimate takeaway from the early 21st century when historians look through it, it'll ultimately show just how badly Silicon Valley betrayed the United States.

sort of a horrifying article.

Except it doesn't make any sense. What did Apple know about making phones? Back then the top dog was Nokia. It was FoxConn helping Apple figure out how to make a phone.

Um. No. It was Foxconn who helped Apple to scale.

>What did Apple know about making phones?

A lot. More so than most people would imagine.

It started long before phones. Apple went all in on Wifi before anyone even dreamed of wireless lans becoming mainstream. In 1999 they invested heavily in manufacturing wireless cards in Taiwan at their analog modem supplier (whoever was manufacturing for Lucent at the time, would be nice to know exact OEM), Apple had to babysit and teach their vendor every step of the way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj5NNxVwNwQ

Apple did the same for iPhone camera modules with Primax who went from small time accessories and gadgets manufacturer to one of Taiwan titans.

If you are referring to Apple's sending engineers to work out problems and enforce standards you should know that this is not unique to Apple. Huawei does the same with its own suppliers. In my opinion it has much more to do with the fact that Apple and Huawei can afford to pay their engineers much better and hire people with good problem solving skills. It is not that they have some secret sauce and have to teach the factories how to make things. That would be a strange interpretation.

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