Tim Cook Interview

So far, I have to give Tim Cook a big thumbs up for his leadership role at Apple. He is not afraid to step up and say "We screwed up" when they do. I have no idea what kind of volume of machines will be assembled in the US, or what those jobs will pay, but this might also be a sign the the economics of off-shoring are changing:

Tim Cook's Freshman Year: The Apple CEO Speaks - Businessweek

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Comments

broli720

Have to disagree with you there. Apple is going down hill and it all started after Jobs died. Quite a few high level execs have left or been fired and that is usually a strong indicator of turmoil within a corporation. With marginal improvement in their proucts and all these law suits, their image has taken a real hit and the market has responded accordingly. Making overpriced iMacs in the U.S. will not save Apple; most of us just have to realize that some manufacturing jobs will not come back to the states.

Roguetadhg

Marginal improvements are what the iPhone does best.

Iristheangel

Rogue, you have never been more spot on

varelg

Nothing but a PR stunt. Notice the use of the word "assembled". Not "manufactured", it is assembled in the US.
How much do Macs contribute to overall sales of Apple products?

tpatt100

Apple going "downhill" is a bit different than a declining stock price. Analysts drove that price sky high with a few years of speculation and Apple was able to hit goals the analysts projected and the stock price kept climbing. Now? Hardly anybody is hitting those goals Microsoft, Amazon, Google and I think most if not all tech stocks are experiencing this.

To see a tech company that sells primarily consumer electronics be valued around OIL companies made no sense, but people saw crazy profits and sales and up the stock went.

They keep breaking their previous sales records but analysts kept wanting records that broke records from all the previous years of double digits which to me sounds absurd.

The "quite a few" executives was "two" that left, fired. Microsoft did this and will probably do the same to Balmer due to Windows 8 sales and they cut estimates for Windows Surface by half now. Management shakeup makes sense when you are risking becoming stagnate.

Almost half of Apple's sales/profits was the iPhone. That is why I figured Apple stock price would drop back to the normal range some day. When your phone is making the same profits almost every quarter than Microsoft's quarter total you know your company is going to be in trouble long term.

The iPhone is also their biggest problem because analysts keep watching their production costs. The iPad mini they released? Cut into the expected profit margin compared to the 500 dollar iPad, analysts winced stock slipped. They have to keep making that phone in China because robots can't put small things together that fast. Apple's problem is they sell the things so fast that only humans working around the clock can put them together fast enough. They sell more phones in a weekend than some do all year which is a problem production wise.

The "over priced" Mac line is the only stuff that can be made in the US and maintain a big profit margin. The size and assembly times make it feasible to make in the US.

So people don't want "over priced" stuff we want 200 dollar tablets with no profit margin, those 200 dollar tablets will stay overseas. Apple actually makes money on their tablets and "could" bring them to the US and only lose maybe 50 bucks in production costs. Problem? Shareholders complain about reduced profit margins, stock tanks some more.

China experienced a massive boom in employee pay due to all of the off shoring of electronic devices. Now reports are the factories are moving deeper into the mountainous region looking for cheaper labor and there are factories sprouting up in Vietnam. Because? We don't like "over priced" stuff. We want it frequent and cheap so deeper into the jungles we go looking for cheap labor to slave away.

The "Made in the USA" label according to the FTC from this link:

Macs made in USA could jump-start American manufacturing - Business on NBCNews.com

From page 5 of the FTC 1998 report

What is the standard for a product to be called Made inUSA without qualification?

For a product to be called Made in USA, or claimed to be of
domestic origin without qualifications or limits on the claim,
the product must be “all or virtually all” made in the U.S.
The term “United States,” as referred to in the Enforcement
Policy Statement, includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia,
and the U.S. territories and possessions.
What does “all or virtually all” mean?

“All or virtually all” means that all significant parts and
processing that go into the product must be of U.S. origin.
That is, the product should contain no — or negligible —
foreign content.

So it will probably be the Mac line due to shipping costs and parts can be made here in the US. Smartphones will continue to be made in the mountains or jungles somewhere.

ptilsen

It is just one line of iMacs being assembled in the US as tpatt stated. Don't hold your breath on manufacturing coming back to the US. Small items still make sense to build in China, Vietnam, et. al., and larger items (cars) get made in Mexico. And again, iPad and iPhone combined are almost all of Apple's profits. Macs are more popular than they were, but are a tiny portion of Apple's money.

Tim Cook is a good businessman, but there's something to be said for having an engineer running things. Regardless of what you think of Jobs and Apple, Jobs was Apple and was the primary reason Apple become what it did. Jobs wasn't omniscient, but he never would have allowed Maps to happen the way it did.

I won't say Apple is in decline, because that is simply not backed by evidence. Revenues, profits, market share, market cap are all up post-Jobs, regardless of recent stock trends and increasing competition from MS and Google. However, Tim Cook has his work cut out for him. Among Apple enthusiasts, there is already the perception that the company is not what it was in terms of customer service, innovation, and usability. I'm not an Apple enthusiast, and I've still been pleased with iPad and iPhone progress over the last year, but that perception is and always has been a huge factor in Apple's success.