clone wrote:an additional $10 to $65 on top of the $260 sounds more than reasonable.
Agreed, which is why I'm saying that the reason they're not manufactured here is likely not a reduction in $65 of profit per device. Either the true cost difference isn't $65, or there are other factors.
clone wrote:todays capitalism, when billions are in play ya gotta sweeten the pot.
This kind of undermines your point, as Glorious points out. If the Chinese are subsidizing their industry to make it attractive to foreign companies, such as Apple, those massive expenditures are not represented in that $65 price difference. Imagine how much it would cost Apple to build that kind of capacity in the US. I would imagine it would work out to much more than $65 per iPad.
clone wrote:it's solid enough, did you listen to the episode or just noticed it's an episode?
Since you weren't in a linking mood, despite me asking you for one, I found the NYT article - not podcast - where the $65 figure surfaced. I even quoted the paragraph which only mentioned increased labor costs. The episode of TAL that I found doesn't mention the $65 in the text and forgive me if I express some doubt about how I'm supposed to listen to a podcast debunking a person who rails against Apple with the notion that somewhere in there is a nugget of where that $65 comes from. It's an episode already talking about liars and bad sources. Convince me. You can start by confirming that I had the right link.
If you've got a source that breaks out or at least summarizes all the factors that go into this $65 price difference,
then by all means link to it and I'll go check it out. But I note that you have provided jack and squat in terms of sources for your claims so far. Dave, at least, provided a link. More on that later.
clone wrote:even your discovery that Ipad's total cost is $260 to build, now tack on another $10 to $65 in labor & environmental costs translating to a 25% cost increase per unit to build in NA which sounds about right vs the fabricated 500% which sounds ridiculous.
Hmm. Two points: First, I really doubt that $65 includes environmental costs and even if it did, that still leaves out permitting, taxes, unions, warehousing and the rest of the logistics chain. Second, I agree with you that the "500%" increase is unlikely. I bust your hump for no sources, but the 500% is even thinner.
David wrote:Closest I can find right now.There is another article that I can't find right now that's more along the lines of what clone read.
I went into your link and followed the trail to the paper submitted by the ADB Institute. From the working paper:
Xing and Detert wrote:An interesting hypothetical scenario is one where Apple had all iPhones assembled in the US. Assuming that the wages of US workers are ten times as high as those of their PRC counterparts and their productivity would be equal in 2009, if iPhones were assembled in the US the total assembly cost would rise to US$65 and total manufacturing cost would be pushed to approximately US$240. Selling iPhones assembled by US workers at US$500 per unit would still leave a 50% profit margin for Apple.
Thanks for the link, but nothing I've seen touches on the difficulties and costs in running a major manufacturing operation in the USA specifically as it relates to the iPad. I'm not too surprised, actually. I would expect such analysis to be done at the corporate level, expensive to research and probably an industrial secret. Nobody would know how much it costs better than Apple would.
In conclusion, it probably would cost much more per iPad to manufacture it domestically. How much more, I cannot say.