One of the downsides of outsourcing manufacturing to China is that you’re a day’s trip away or more from your home USA base just to see what’s going on in the boardroom. The other yet bigger downside is that you’re handing your technology to a country known for stealing intellectual property.
The PC industry has been through this before. It was only a decade ago that US firms such as Gateway, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard were dominant players in PCs, now they’ve since been replaced by Chinese firms Lenovo and Asus. These competitors now dominating the industry were built from outsourcing to China since we gave them the knowledge and technology on a silver platter to knock-off.
Samsung is the latest example of this since it builds many of the key components for the iPhone and iPad. Therefore, its no coincidence that Samsung is able to build similar quality products that are now Apple’s competition. Now, word is that China based Foxconn is building a smartphone for Amazon.
I think Apple sees the writing on the wall although it may be too late for Apple to begin moving production to the U.S. to avoid what awaits them in about five years from all the technology they exported to a den of thieves known as The People’s Republic Of China.