Special team within Apple investigating move of up to 30% of production out of China

William Gallagher for AppleInsider:

A team of between 30 and 40 people at Apple is surveying the company’s major suppliers about the cost implications of moving production out of China. Nikkei reports that several major suppliers have confirmed that Apple has asked them to look into moving and restructuring production.


Apple’s team is reportedly also negotiating with local governments about securing preferential terms for those suppliers. According to Nikkei sources, the team is now or plans to negotiate with governments in Mexico, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

MacDailyNews Take: File under: Don’t Put All your Eggs in One Basket.


    1. The basket will CONTINUE to be notorious for stealing intellectual property. Because the ONLY company with the scale to do what Apple is looking to do, and they said so a few weeks ago, is Foxconn… a Chinese company.

      1. Foxconn is not headquartered in the People’s Republic of China, but in Taiwan. It puts its plants wherever it can make the most money. Until the trade wars, that was in the only country on earth with enough skilled workers willing

        1. Willing to accept seasonal employment in assembly plants scaled to Apple’s requirements. There is a reason that 60% of production will still remain in the PRC after diversification. Putting all your eggs in one basket is sort of unavoidable when there is only one basket that can hold your eggs.

      2. As others have pointed out Foxconn is actually from Taiwan (hint: a real country with a real legal system) and they have operations around the world. China has the killer supply chain, agreed, but it would be interesting to see if all companies, not just Apple, can diversify away from the utter shithole cesspool that is the people republic of patent infringement

  1. Getting all US companies out of Communist China, enemy of the US and blatant technology thieves, would be best.
    Having crazy cheap labor needs to be a second factor after “Is the host country going to steal my patents?” or “Is the host country going to put 20% to 50% tariffs on my goods going to the US?”

    1. China hasn’t been the ‘cheapest’ option for quite some time now – South Asia is much cheaper. Their Guangdong/HK supply chain is the real powerhouse. Soon, even HK won’t be safe from the ripoff artists and locusts so we need to start diversifying now.

  2. From someone who deals in the consumer goods industry all day every day. Apple is 1 of 10,000 companies doing this right now and this is what Trump knows will happen in the trade war. There are numerous other countries clamoring for the production shift and they are waiting with open arms. China knows this too which is why i think we are a month or 2 from a deal. If this goes on with the new round of tariffs or even round 3 companies are not going to wait around for a deal and will flee china immediately. This will cause the Chinese economy to collapse… which wont be allowed to happen,. Thus we get a deal!

    1. Exactly! Best bet is to deal with slightly higher prices and pull all production out of China. They are not our friends. They are ruthless, communist enemies.
      – They steal our IP any way they can.
      – They poison our food, our pet food and make counterfeit product of everything.
      – They make counterfeit pharmaceuticals that end up killing people.
      Screw them.

        1. I forgot about air pollution. China is notorious for having the worst air quality because of all the factories, and China ignores any and all air quality controls. They are the worst.

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