Foxconn does assembly and that is not a big cost of an iphone [0]. Like literally just a fraction compared to American IP, Taiwan CPUs, or Japanese cameras and the latter are all much harder to move compared to assembly.
From another article: The total component cost of an iPhone in 2009 was $172.46. Workers in China assemble the iPhone, but because their wages are low the assembly cost per phone (labeled manufacturing costs in the table below) is quite small, only $6.50 a phone. The total production cost per phone is $178.96: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/29/the-innovati...
>"If iPhones were assembled in the US the total assembly cost would rise to US$68 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": http://business.time.com/2011/01/11/is-the-iphone-bad-for-th...
However, I think it's fair to conclude: Slicing the iPhone in this way, we can see that the real value of the iPhone isn’t in the manufacturing process at all, but lies in its design and the development of its components. And by owning the technology and design, the U.S. also gains in global trade, even though the iPhone isn’t manufactured in America: http://business.time.com/2011/01/11/is-the-iphone-bad-for-th...
There’s no way that assembly in California or anywhere else in the US would even come close to doubling the price of an iPhone. Assembly cost is not that high[1].
Only $6.50 added by Foxconn's assembly step? I'd have expected much more.
Here's the question I emailed to sjobs@apple.com last week:
Subject: Made in the US iPhone?
Hiya. I love my iPhone. I'd be willing to pay more than the $200 that I paid to AT&T if it were assembled in the US.
Do you think enough of the market would embrace a "Made in the US" iPhone version with a $100 (?) premium? Would that be enough of an increase to offset higher labor costs?
I'm sure about the high volume low cost part, even for iPhones, Macs and all kinds of modern consumer electronics. The Chinese companies assembling these are making pennies on the dollar compared to what the companies that design and market them sell them for. For example, it may cost Apple around $30 to manufacture and build an iPhone in China [1]
Note that there was an article a while ago that claimed that assembling the iPhone in the USA would cost an extra $30-40, and that was mostly due to logistics.
So I would guess the extra cost would be less than that. You probably aren't talking about much difference here.
I was curious about this, so I found a somewhat recent study that looked at how much it would cost for an "all-american" iPhone. The authors of the study think it would cost about $30-40/phone to do final assembly in the US (with Chinese and other foreign components), and sourcing all-US components would add another $30-40/phone. What is only lightly mentioned is the many, many billions of dollars it would take to build all of those production lines domestically, which makes it a non-starter. I could easily imagine it costing hundreds of billions of dollars.
Apple buys iPhones wholesale from CMs (contract manufacturer) like Foxconn, Pegatron, etc for only $250-$350 and sells them for around $799-$1000 retail. The cost of labor (ie, final assembly; aka, manufacturing) in iPhone BOM, often born by CM's, is around $10-$12 per device.
You provide some reasonable explanation, but that still overlooked the value for China's manufacture provided. For the folks of supporting Made in USA, do you think they would accept the price tag that assembly whole iPhone would just charge less than $10?
If all parts of the iPhone were built in the US of A it would cost $100 more according to the University of Syracuse. Solely because we lack nearly all logistical and infrastructural capacity to mass produce technologically advanced industrial components at scale and with dynamic parameterization.
iPhones are not cheap. Like almost all Apple products, they are expensive compared to comparable competing products. Several studies have shown that iPhones cost 2-3 times the cost of the components from which they are assembled. Apple claims huge profits and over $200 billion stashed overseas to avoid US taxes.
Apple contracts a lot of work out to H1-Bs through firms like Wipro. This may well result in larger profits for Apple, but it certainly does not translate to cheaper products for Americans or jobs for Americans.
i think you didn't read the article? They cited a study that claimed that since the majority of iphone cost is materials and logistics, making it in america would only add $65 to the production cost of a single phone.
But the real barrier is that making all the screws, the gaskets, etc, is all overseas and it would be prohibitive to have to ship those raw materials.
And sure, to make ALL those things -- American all the way down -- would be quite expensive. But nobody is advocating for more american factories making screws.
It's not that unreasonable. The iphone costs apple only slightly more than $200 to manufacture per unit and there are obviously even cheaper phones out there.
[0]: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-iphone-7-and-...
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