Why Apple REALLY Manufactures in China: Tim Cook Explains

Why does Apple really manufacture in China? Many assume it's solely down to low labour costs and a vast workforce – a 20th-century view of low-skilled jobs. However, the reality is starkly different, as Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals.

Forget the old stereotypes. In a compelling interview clip, Cook explains the critical factors beyond cheap wages that keep Apple's production centred in China. Discover the crucial role of specialised skills, advanced tooling expertise, and the sheer scale and flexibility of the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem.

Cook's insights shed light on why bringing manufacturing back to countries like the US or UK is far more challenging than simply comparing labour costs. Watch to understand the modern realities of global manufacturing and why China remains a powerhouse, directly from the leader of one of the world's biggest tech companies.

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#apple #china #manufacturing #timcook #supplychain #technology #globalisation #business #engineering #skills #trump

[yannickluecker]

This interview wasn't recent - it was years ago. It's just that most people didn't *LISTEN* to it until recently

[TravisHRFCC]

Hmmm …from Tim Cook’s comments perhaps the US should invest in improving the abilities and skills of our workforce? Nahhh …that would require a financial commitment and a properly educated population, so that’s a nonstarter.

[stephenlesbos]

It takes 20+ years to get your toolroom engineers up to a standard that is feasible. It's just like software engineering, you need decades of group experience to know what to do, what not to do, and why. "Nine women cannot make a baby in a month".

[barlow]

The problem with american capatilism is that it won't invest in its labour force. The end result is a poorly educated population, another reason they got duped by trump.

[Prawny]

Don't worry - the US education department has been defunded. That should help the situation!

[jrsydvl]

Taiwan built a chip factory in Phoenix AZ. They remark how difficult it is to hire the skilled workers to make previous generation chips. Now Donny wants to take out our other kneecap by slashing federal education funds.

[PaulG.x]

I'm an electronics technician by trade but mainly service lab analysers. I have been in electronics for more that 45 years . I currently service products from the US , China, The EU and Japan.
Chinese instruments are very well made as are the EU products (except some German stuff which is over complicated to the point it can sometimes be a nightmare) . Japanese instruments are nearly always perfect.
I have worked on American instruments since the 1980s. They are usually bottom of the bunch - with the occasional exception.
Btw. It will take decades for the US to get to the level the Chinese Semiconductor industry is at right now

[bushidofreakz]

When asked in survey, 90% of US children wants to grow up and become influencers. While in Chayna 90% wants to be engineers. This should already told which country gonna lead us into a better future

[mellie]

I'm English my grandson's mother is Chinese, he is ten and smarter than any grade twelve student in the U.S in tems of math, science, music etc. The Chinese place great merit in education and their schools are amazing. My son has lived there twenty-five years and loves the people, the culture and the country...

[berosmith]

In 1969, Ireland made one of the best decisions it ever made. It decided to make education free for everyone. That has led to skilled labour and getting well-paid jobs in the country as well as exporting people who had skills and academic knowledge. I just hope the present government does not destroy it all. It meant so much for the country.

[martinphillips]

How can America match skilled labour when they are busy closing the education department and turning schools into day cares

[CreRay]

One could think that a German manufacturer like BMW who exports more cars from the US than they import in the US should please them. Now even they are called out being a ”scam” because not all parts are made in the US. Which are made by suppliers. It goes to show that there is no logic in their reasoning. Who’d move production to the US when the political climate is completely unstable?

[robertgibson]

The US should have a long, hard look at its own history, in the 19th. century and early 20th. they imported skilled and educated people from Europe in vast numbers, which is how they achieved industrial (and military) dominance. A major problem with American education is it is so expensive that working people just can't afford it.

[darkglass]

Specialization = Efficiency
Efficiency = Increased Productivity
Increased Productivity = Lower Costs

[MIEJ]

China has massively changed even in the last 20 years. Has America?

[chefchaudard]

Add to that the supply chains : in China, you can find a factories with skilled labour that can supply in large quantities screws, screens, batteries, metal case, wires, etc… next door.

For Apple to manufacture in the us, it would require not only the manufacturing facility, but all the subcontractors that supply every part from the battery up to the plastic bags and boxes to pack the product.

[TalesOfWar]

To add to the Apple example. They moved the manufacture of the Mac Pro (their high end workstation desktop) to the US. It's low enough sales volume that it just about works out. They tried to make as much of it as possible in the US, but they can't. They had to turn to China for something as simple as screws. Nowhere in the ENTIRE USA had the skill, or ability to make the various kinds of screws they needed for this ONE product at the scale needed, and they sell very few Mac Pro's, a few thousand a month maybe. It took a few days to send the designs and spec of the screws needed to a company in China for them to spin up the line and have them on a ship to the USA for assembly. THAT is why everyone uses China. They've spent decades and TRILLIONS on becoming the world's manufacturing hub. They have the entire production line from raw material coming out of the ground to a fully finished product in a box being loaded on to a cargo ship. Very few components need to be imported, and even when they do, they've streamlined the hell out of that process too. There are literally factories as big as small cities that can be dedicated to a single product or type of product. Like 80% of the elements used in all the toasters in the entire world come from a SINGLE factory! NOBODY can compete with this unless you're willing to spend those decades and trillions to do it, like they did.

[pabloapostar]

In the US, anti-education goes back a century to the child labor laws (which the Republican Party opposed as it removed "cheap" labor from their financiers). The conceit pushed by the marketers (to defeat child labor laws) was that schools were just "warehouses" until people were finally old enough to get jobs. I had an English teacher who was explicitly told by the principal of high school in Northern California (around 1970) that their job was to "just keep them busy until they're old enough to work." I was asked by a high school principal (once he found out I had attended a college prep school) whether it was more important to have fun or learn. My knee-jerk reaction was "what's the difference?" As I was interviewing for "counselor at a summer day camp" I answered "fun."

Ronald Reagan made decreasing the financing to the public universities in California one of his priorities when he was governor, when California had the cheapest tuition and arguably best public universities in the country. The Republicans also made decreasing the programs in K-12 public schools a priority (40 years ago) with the marketing jingle "reading writing and arithmetic" being the only things allowed (no science, arts and sports (in some areas)). They then concocted "school vouchers" to strip public school funding to finance private Christian schools who would then teach Creationism and not any science that would contradict their "IT REALLY HAPPENED" opinion of Bible stories.

Etc.

[ShiftyGeeza]

It's a cultural thing. The US rewards a get rich quick mentality and sadly that mentality has also spread to the rest of the West top to bottom. Honour, dignity, honesty and hard work is for suckers. Meanwhile, grift, selfishness, lies and greed is lauded and in fact rewarded, and as long as you're succesful in accumulating wealth by any means, that's all that matters.

Is honour even a thing in the West any more? When I hear politicians in Parliament call each other "The right honourable member" for whichever constituency I can't even believe that the word "honourable" is being used with a British politician anymore.

[billydog]

Some people think Chinese is a poverty stricken hellhole full of slaves but for the people who have actualy been there and travled the country as I have it's like being in a time machine and traveling to the future of course there are poor people as in any country but over all it is decades ahead of the west more people need to go there and see for them selves it truly is amazing