The supply chain of Apple's iPhone always draws people's attention to explore. An iPhone involves hundreds of suppliers, and it is a product of global economic integration. In the smartphone market, the competition on the surface includes marketing and channels, while the management, optimization, and efficiency of the supply chain are the competition behind the scenes.
In our previous reports, China accounted for about 50% of the share in Apple's Asian supply system. Meanwhile, in an infographic about Apple's supply chain drawn by Financesonline, it shows that 85% of an iPhone is assembled in China, making China inseparable from the birth of the iPhone.
Recently, Apple has moved the assembly of Macs back to the United States, leading some to speculate whether Apple will also move the assembly of iPhones to the United States? The answer is almost impossible. The core competitiveness of Made-in-China is not limited to cheap labor, but also key components and the strong execution capability of factories. Key components include rare earth elements controlled by China, and in terms of production execution, factories can make tens of thousands of employees work overtime day and night without even signing contracts with them, which is impossible in the United States.
At the same time, due to the hot sales of Apple's iPhones, a large number of jobs related to hardware, software, and manufacturing have been created. Including both direct and indirect jobs, the number exceeds one million. The iPhone not only changed consumers' lives but also changed many people's employment.
Financesonline used a chart to describe the relevant data of Apple's iPhone supply chain:
From the perspective of assembly efficiency, Chinese factories (such as Foxconn) find it extremely easy to recruit workers in large numbers. With just a little training, they can perform repetitive tasks on the production line. There is a statistic that to find 8700 engineers to manage 200,000 workers, it takes only 15 days in China, while it would take 9 months in the United States.
The chart gives an example: in the weeks before the launch of the 2007 iPhone, Apple needed to install glass screens on a group of iPhones. American manufacturers said it was impossible due to the short time frame, but Chinese factories immediately started working, and these people had already worked for 12 hours before signing labor contracts. After this factory won the project, 8000 workers ate cookies and drank tea while installing glass screens on 10,000 iPhones per day.
Steve Jobs once said that the reason iPhones are not assembled in the United States is not about price, but the speed of production in Asian factories, which is extremely fast, and they can achieve super large scale and high flexibility. In fact, if iPhones were assembled in the United States, the retail price of each unit would only increase by $2-3. Moreover, apart from assembly, the supply chain would be difficult to摆脱separate from Chinese manufacturers. In processing and manufacturing, China can also achieve flexibility, efficiency, and first-class technology.
In terms of employment numbers, the influence of Apple's iPhone is quite extensive. In 2011, Apple created 43,000 jobs in the United States and had 20,000 employees stationed abroad. Additionally, there were 700,000 employees from other companies serving Apple abroad, including contract manufacturers, supply chains, and channel employees.
In the United States, the number of employees relying on the Apple ecosystem reached 598,500 in 2012, among which Apple hired 50,250 employees, and other companies relied on Apple for 257,000 people in hardware-related roles, while developers on the iOS platform numbered 291,250. Adding the latter two together, Apple has created more than a million jobs globally.
In the United States, employees mainly focus on the design and services of software and hardware, with fewer core components, most of which come from Asia. The iPhone has a large number of components that require rare earth elements, which are only available in places like Inner Mongolia in China. Due to China's restrictions on the export of rare earth elements, this has become one of the main reasons why iPhones and iPads must be produced in China.
China mainly contributes to processing and manufacturing, while Japan and South Korea provide key components such as LCD panels, processor chips, batteries, and memory. Components from Europe are fewer, such as gyroscopes provided by STMicroelectronics.
Below is the original image: