by Jason Snell
Apple starts actively diversifying from China
Yang Jie and Aaron Tilley, reporting over the weekend for the Wall Street Journal (Apple News link):
In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group.
The challenges detailed in the story will be very difficult ones for Apple to solve. Can Vietnam and India step up in terms of producing Apple products at the level that Chinese factories can? It’s an open question. Vietnam is not very large, population-wise, and India has a system of federated regional governments that complicates the issue.
But nobody said this would be easy. It’s telling that, seemingly after years of denial, Apple has accepted the fact that it needs to not have almost all of its manufacturing and assembly happening inside a single country.