Why Apple Got a 'Made in U.S.A.' Bug - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Today, rising energy prices and a global market for computers are changing the way companies make their machines.
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Hewlett-Packard, which turns out over 50 million computers a year through its own plants and subcontractors, makes many of its larger desktop personal computers in such higher-cost areas as Indianapolis and Tokyo to save on fuel costs and to serve business buyers rapidly.
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In 1998, President Bill Clinton visited a Gateway Computer factory outside Dublin to cheer the role of American manufacturers in the rise of a “Celtic Tiger” in technology.That plant was shut in 2001, when Gateway elected to save costs by manufacturing in China
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A Dell factory in Winston-Salem, N.C., for which Dell received $280 million in incentives from the government, was shut in 2010 (Dell had to repay some of the incentives).
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More recent products, laptops and notebook computers, were in many cases originally assembled in China, and they are still largely made there. So are most smartphones and tablets. Every week, H.P. sends a group of cargo containers filled with notebooks to Europe.
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The labor cost on a notebook, which is about 4 to 5 percent of the retail price, is only slightly higher than the cost of shipping by air. Soon even that is likely to change because of the twin forces of lower manufacturing costs from automation and higher transportation costs from rising global activity.
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Intel, which makes most of the processors, has plants in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Israel, Ireland and China.
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Many other chip companies design their own products and have them made in giant factories, largely in Taiwan and China. Computer screens are made in Taiwan and South Korea, for the most part.
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The special glass used for the touch screens of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, however, is an exception. It comes primarily from the United States.
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As cheap as a Chinese assembly worker may be, an emerging trend in manufacturing, specialized robots, promises to be even cheaper. The most valuable part of the computer, a motherboard loaded with microprocessors and memory, is already largely made with robots. People do things like fitting in batteries and snapping on screens.
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That plant was shut in 2001, when Gateway elected to save costs by manufacturing in China. Dell, which made its mark by developing lean manufacturing techniques in Texas, closed its showcase Austin factory in 2008 as part of a companywide move to manufacturing in China. A Dell factory in Winston-Salem, N.C., for which Dell received $280 million in incentives from the government, was shut in 2010 (Dell had to repay some of the incentives).