In 2020, Terry Gou said: Once Apple evacuates China, a large number of Chinese companies will go bankrupt. However, two years have passed. Not only has Apple not reduced its dependence on China, but the value of China's suppliers has become higher and higher. Can Apple still leav

020, Terry Gou said: Once Apple evacuates from China, a large number of Chinese companies will go bankrupt. However, two years have passed, not only has Apple not reduced its dependence on China, but the value of China's suppliers has become higher and higher. Can Apple still leave China?

Apple's supply chain has initially achieved results after the release of IPhone14, Apple's assembly plants in India became popular because they will also participate in the production of flagship machines, and it will be only 2 months later than the Chinese factory.

You should know that according to the management in the previous two years, due to supply chain problems, Indian factories generally lag behind by 6-9 months, and now it has tripled at once, and the distance between China and India's foundry factories has been further narrowed.

So some people were excited and said: Apple is getting rid of its dependence on China, and Chinese companies will become more and more difficult in the future.

Seeing this, I really want to laugh. Apple wants to be Chinese, but it is not a secret.

Since King Dong came to power in 2016, he has asked Apple to move the assembly factory back to the United States. Unfortunately, the manufacturing industry in the United States is really unsuccessful, so this matter was not successful, but Apple still decided to transfer the industrial chain and reduce its dependence on China.

In 2017, while negotiating with India and asking for subsidies, they asked two assembly factories, Wistron and Foxconn , to build factories in India and prepare to produce iPhones in India. Since then, India's Apple suppliers have rapidly increased to 9.

After 2020, Apple has established production lines for Airpods and MacBook in Vietnam, officially starting the transfer of supply chains to Southeast Asia. Apple has 31 cooperative factories in Vietnam, which has doubled in three years. They even promised that as long as Vietnamese factories meet the standards, they are interested.

According to Apple's plan, the industrial chain transfer is roughly divided into three steps: the first step is to establish an assembly plant with low technical content in Southeast Asia, the second step is to build a distribution center and some easily transferred supply chains, and finally improve the supply chain step by step, thereby reducing dependence on China.

Under the guidance of Apple, Fruit Chain has been launched in full swing. In 2021 alone, 23 factories have been built in Vietnam, even Chinese suppliers are no exception. Goertek , Blue Technology, Domain Intelligent Manufacturing, Luxshare Precision , etc., all famous Fruit Chain in China have established factories in Vietnam.

can be said that Apple has made great moves in getting rid of China's strategy.

So in 2020, Terry Gou said pessimistically: Once Apple evacuates China, China will face a large number of companies going bankrupt. Now 5 years have passed, has Apple succeeded?

answer is not the answer. Apple's big move not only failed to get rid of its dependence on China, but the number of Chinese suppliers has increased.

China's supply chain has not decreased but increased

First of all, Chinese suppliers increased. In 2020, Apple added 36 new suppliers, of which 22 were Chinese companies (12 in mainland China, 10 in total harbors).

Secondly, the value of suppliers in mainland China is also increasing. 10 years ago, China was mainly engaged in the assembly of iPhones, accounting for only 3.6%. In 2020, when Apple released iPhone12, China had already accounted for 15%. In 2022, the value of Chinese fruit chain suppliers had reached 25%.

such as screens, glass, batteries, and camera modules were previously provided by Japan and South Korea. Now Chinese suppliers have squeezed in. It is even rumored that Yangtze River Storage has been included in the supply chain list, which were previously the share of developed countries.

But that's not over yet. In 2021, Apple's jobs recruited in China increased by 50%, and many of them were engineer positions. They are engaged in key design work for Apple, which is a historic moment.

Because in Apple's previous industrial system, the United States was responsible for research and development and design and China was responsible for manufacturing. Now Apple has squeezed out part of their core design work to China, which also shows that China's position in Apple's supply chain has not declined, but has become increasingly important.

So the question is, Apple is obviously taking the initiative to de-Sinicize, so why is China's status getting higher and higher? Can we still get rid of our dependence on China in the future? All this starts with Apple entering China.

To understand why Apple cannot live without China, we must understand why it must come to China to find an OEM factory? I believe most people will tell you that Apple is just fond of China's cheap labor. In fact, this is not the case at all. Apple went to China like Tesla , just to solve production capacity and technical problems. It can be said that without Chinese factories, Apple would fall into a production capacity nightmare like Tesla once did.

is not nonsense, but Jobs 's personal experience.

Jobs did not like Chinese factories, but focused on Silicon ValleyManufacturing

In the 1980s, large American technology companies had already begun to transfer the industrial chain, but Apple's founder Jobs was different. He was a person with a very strong obsession. In his opinion, there are three factors for the success of a product: one is design, one is software, and the other is hardware.

, and the software and hardware must be coordinated with each other to be perfect, but if you want to match software and hardware, you cannot keep the software and hardware too far away. The design team stays in the United States, so the products also need to be manufactured locally in the United States.

. At that time, the United States was still at the peak of manufacturing, and the slogan of American manufacturing represented the quality of products. So in order to fulfill this obsession, Jobs built several factories in the United States, but these factories surprised him.

Apple US headquarters

The first one was in 1983. At that time, he personally led the construction of the world's most advanced manufacturing factory opposite the Apple headquarters in San Francisco. This factory is used to produce Apple's Macintosh computers, and the entire assembly line is highly automated.

In Jobs' plan, this factory can not only reduce labor costs to 2% of the total cost, but also quickly mass-produce advanced Apple computers. At that time, he proudly said: This is a machine made in the United States.

However, this advanced factory was closed in 1992. Not only did it fail to achieve scheduled mass production, it even failed to achieve high automation. At that time, Apple's product director Gassée even publicly stated that it was a shame.

Former Apple product director Garcey

However, these cannot change Jobs' favor for American manufacturing.

In 1990, Jobs was expelled from Apple. He then founded the NEXT company and spent $10 million to build a factory. Jobs commented on it as "I am proud of our computers and factories", but this attempt ended in failure again.

Two attempts to completely shatter Jobs's Silicon Valley's dream of manufacturing was completely broken. However, they still did not trust assembly in China, but instead tried to try Europe with more developed manufacturing industries, such as Ireland and other countries, but failed.

three attempts failed three times.

made Jobs begin to reflect on his industrial chain strategy. After 1998, Apple hired Tim Cook as the president of Apple's operation department, responsible for building a global supply chain. Since then, like other companies, Apple has taken the easy-to-drive of making in China. So I said that it is not China that needs Apple, but Apple needs China.

So why is Apple increasingly dependent on China?

's answer is actually very simple, that is, China's manufacturing industry is too good at learning, and their learning ability makes Jobs and Apple unable to leave China in Chengdu. This is not nonsense.

Jobs was conquered by Chinese manufacturing

In fact, as early as 2012, the American New York Times gave a similar answer. They published an article titled: Why is iPhone made in China, which introduces two stories.

The first story: Jobs refused in public Obama

The then American President Obama invited celebrities from Silicon Valley to attend the party. Jobs was also at the scene. At the meeting, Obama allowed all celebrities to ask him questions. When it was Jobs' turn, Obama spoke first and asked him: What conditions are needed for Apple to return to the United States to make?

Obviously, Obama's implication is to let Jobs turn Apple production back to the United States, and the conditions can be opened at will.

However, surprisingly, Jobs did not give the president any face and did not even make a perfunctory decision. Instead, he told him with great certainty: "These work will never come back."

Later, the New York Times learned about this and was very curious. They interviewed a large number of Apple employees to understand why Apple chose China over the United States.

So there is a second story: Apple executives revealed that building a factory in China is Apple’s only choice. This conclusion is almost the same as what I said above, but Apple executives gave an example and still amazed me.

He said: Once, due to screen quality issues, Apple temporarily changed the design of the iPhone screen, but there was not much time before official sales, so the entire production line needs to be temporarily readjusted.

In order to complete the task, Foxconn arranged for nearly 10,000 employees of the company to work overtime overnight. As a result, in just half an hour, the production line with glass screens was built, with amazing efficiency. Then, within 3 days, the production line was adjusted, and the output of the new iPhone quickly soared to a daily rate of tens of thousands of units.

The efficiency and flexibility of the Chinese factory shocked all Apple executives. After that, they were conquered by China. Any Apple executives or engineers would never talk about transferring the industrial chain as long as they came to China.

The New York Times finally gave an evaluation: China's manufacturing industry's scale, efficiency and industrial skills are far superior to the United States. However, these are just superficial. Not only these are the only ones in China's manufacturing industry, but also the R&D capabilities of technology are also one of the important reasons why Apple bet on China.

Let me give you another example: In 2007, Jobs launched his first generation iPhone. He showed off a number of innovative functions at the press conference, among which the smooth touch screen amazes many people.

But few people know the technology of this touch screen, which is actually developed by Chenhong Group.

Chenhong Optoelectronics Technology (TPK)

The mainstream touch screen technology at that time was resistive touch screen , which was composed of a glass base layer and a conductive plastic layer. However, the disadvantages of this technology are very obvious. It can only judge a touch point and perform some simple drag and drop judgments. Therefore, the touch screen was more of a gimmick than a practical function at that time.

, and Jobs's idea of ​​the iPhone 1 was a perfect revolutionary product that could operate smoothly without a keyboard, so he could not accept resistive touch screens at all. In order to find better technology, they invested a lot of research and looked for manufacturers to help in Japan and South Korea, but they had never been able to solve this problem.

Until someone introduced Chenhong Group to Jobs, Chenhong had been studying in the touch screen industry for many years, and even the latest "capacitive" touch screen was also studied. capacitive touch screen can realize multi-touch and operate smoothly. It was the most advanced touch screen technology at that time.

In the end, Jiang Chaorui, the founder of Chenhong, almost bet on all his wealth to overcome this problem, so it also became one of Apple's early supply chain companies.

Chenhong can be said to be a microcosm of China's supply chain.

Because Apple's products are designed first, and then the engineer team goes global to find suitable suppliers based on the design, and then Apple cooperates with suppliers to complete the research and development and production of parts.

This process requires ensuring that every supplier must have the world's top strength, not only has its own technology but also has low prices, so every supplier of Apple is very strong and even irreplaceable.

020, Terry Gou said: Once Apple evacuates from China, a large number of Chinese companies will go bankrupt. However, two years have passed, not only has Apple not reduced its dependence on China, but the value of China's suppliers has become higher and higher. Can Apple still leave China?

Apple's supply chain has initially achieved results after the release of IPhone14, Apple's assembly plants in India became popular because they will also participate in the production of flagship machines, and it will be only 2 months later than the Chinese factory.

You should know that according to the management in the previous two years, due to supply chain problems, Indian factories generally lag behind by 6-9 months, and now it has tripled at once, and the distance between China and India's foundry factories has been further narrowed.

So some people were excited and said: Apple is getting rid of its dependence on China, and Chinese companies will become more and more difficult in the future.

Seeing this, I really want to laugh. Apple wants to be Chinese, but it is not a secret.

Since King Dong came to power in 2016, he has asked Apple to move the assembly factory back to the United States. Unfortunately, the manufacturing industry in the United States is really unsuccessful, so this matter was not successful, but Apple still decided to transfer the industrial chain and reduce its dependence on China.

In 2017, while negotiating with India and asking for subsidies, they asked two assembly factories, Wistron and Foxconn , to build factories in India and prepare to produce iPhones in India. Since then, India's Apple suppliers have rapidly increased to 9.

After 2020, Apple has established production lines for Airpods and MacBook in Vietnam, officially starting the transfer of supply chains to Southeast Asia. Apple has 31 cooperative factories in Vietnam, which has doubled in three years. They even promised that as long as Vietnamese factories meet the standards, they are interested.

According to Apple's plan, the industrial chain transfer is roughly divided into three steps: the first step is to establish an assembly plant with low technical content in Southeast Asia, the second step is to build a distribution center and some easily transferred supply chains, and finally improve the supply chain step by step, thereby reducing dependence on China.

Under the guidance of Apple, Fruit Chain has been launched in full swing. In 2021 alone, 23 factories have been built in Vietnam, even Chinese suppliers are no exception. Goertek , Blue Technology, Domain Intelligent Manufacturing, Luxshare Precision , etc., all famous Fruit Chain in China have established factories in Vietnam.

can be said that Apple has made great moves in getting rid of China's strategy.

So in 2020, Terry Gou said pessimistically: Once Apple evacuates China, China will face a large number of companies going bankrupt. Now 5 years have passed, has Apple succeeded?

answer is not the answer. Apple's big move not only failed to get rid of its dependence on China, but the number of Chinese suppliers has increased.

China's supply chain has not decreased but increased

First of all, Chinese suppliers increased. In 2020, Apple added 36 new suppliers, of which 22 were Chinese companies (12 in mainland China, 10 in total harbors).

Secondly, the value of suppliers in mainland China is also increasing. 10 years ago, China was mainly engaged in the assembly of iPhones, accounting for only 3.6%. In 2020, when Apple released iPhone12, China had already accounted for 15%. In 2022, the value of Chinese fruit chain suppliers had reached 25%.

such as screens, glass, batteries, and camera modules were previously provided by Japan and South Korea. Now Chinese suppliers have squeezed in. It is even rumored that Yangtze River Storage has been included in the supply chain list, which were previously the share of developed countries.

But that's not over yet. In 2021, Apple's jobs recruited in China increased by 50%, and many of them were engineer positions. They are engaged in key design work for Apple, which is a historic moment.

Because in Apple's previous industrial system, the United States was responsible for research and development and design and China was responsible for manufacturing. Now Apple has squeezed out part of their core design work to China, which also shows that China's position in Apple's supply chain has not declined, but has become increasingly important.

So the question is, Apple is obviously taking the initiative to de-Sinicize, so why is China's status getting higher and higher? Can we still get rid of our dependence on China in the future? All this starts with Apple entering China.

To understand why Apple cannot live without China, we must understand why it must come to China to find an OEM factory? I believe most people will tell you that Apple is just fond of China's cheap labor. In fact, this is not the case at all. Apple went to China like Tesla , just to solve production capacity and technical problems. It can be said that without Chinese factories, Apple would fall into a production capacity nightmare like Tesla once did.

is not nonsense, but Jobs 's personal experience.

Jobs did not like Chinese factories, but focused on Silicon ValleyManufacturing

In the 1980s, large American technology companies had already begun to transfer the industrial chain, but Apple's founder Jobs was different. He was a person with a very strong obsession. In his opinion, there are three factors for the success of a product: one is design, one is software, and the other is hardware.

, and the software and hardware must be coordinated with each other to be perfect, but if you want to match software and hardware, you cannot keep the software and hardware too far away. The design team stays in the United States, so the products also need to be manufactured locally in the United States.

. At that time, the United States was still at the peak of manufacturing, and the slogan of American manufacturing represented the quality of products. So in order to fulfill this obsession, Jobs built several factories in the United States, but these factories surprised him.

Apple US headquarters

The first one was in 1983. At that time, he personally led the construction of the world's most advanced manufacturing factory opposite the Apple headquarters in San Francisco. This factory is used to produce Apple's Macintosh computers, and the entire assembly line is highly automated.

In Jobs' plan, this factory can not only reduce labor costs to 2% of the total cost, but also quickly mass-produce advanced Apple computers. At that time, he proudly said: This is a machine made in the United States.

However, this advanced factory was closed in 1992. Not only did it fail to achieve scheduled mass production, it even failed to achieve high automation. At that time, Apple's product director Gassée even publicly stated that it was a shame.

Former Apple product director Garcey

However, these cannot change Jobs' favor for American manufacturing.

In 1990, Jobs was expelled from Apple. He then founded the NEXT company and spent $10 million to build a factory. Jobs commented on it as "I am proud of our computers and factories", but this attempt ended in failure again.

Two attempts to completely shatter Jobs's Silicon Valley's dream of manufacturing was completely broken. However, they still did not trust assembly in China, but instead tried to try Europe with more developed manufacturing industries, such as Ireland and other countries, but failed.

three attempts failed three times.

made Jobs begin to reflect on his industrial chain strategy. After 1998, Apple hired Tim Cook as the president of Apple's operation department, responsible for building a global supply chain. Since then, like other companies, Apple has taken the easy-to-drive of making in China. So I said that it is not China that needs Apple, but Apple needs China.

So why is Apple increasingly dependent on China?

's answer is actually very simple, that is, China's manufacturing industry is too good at learning, and their learning ability makes Jobs and Apple unable to leave China in Chengdu. This is not nonsense.

Jobs was conquered by Chinese manufacturing

In fact, as early as 2012, the American New York Times gave a similar answer. They published an article titled: Why is iPhone made in China, which introduces two stories.

The first story: Jobs refused in public Obama

The then American President Obama invited celebrities from Silicon Valley to attend the party. Jobs was also at the scene. At the meeting, Obama allowed all celebrities to ask him questions. When it was Jobs' turn, Obama spoke first and asked him: What conditions are needed for Apple to return to the United States to make?

Obviously, Obama's implication is to let Jobs turn Apple production back to the United States, and the conditions can be opened at will.

However, surprisingly, Jobs did not give the president any face and did not even make a perfunctory decision. Instead, he told him with great certainty: "These work will never come back."

Later, the New York Times learned about this and was very curious. They interviewed a large number of Apple employees to understand why Apple chose China over the United States.

So there is a second story: Apple executives revealed that building a factory in China is Apple’s only choice. This conclusion is almost the same as what I said above, but Apple executives gave an example and still amazed me.

He said: Once, due to screen quality issues, Apple temporarily changed the design of the iPhone screen, but there was not much time before official sales, so the entire production line needs to be temporarily readjusted.

In order to complete the task, Foxconn arranged for nearly 10,000 employees of the company to work overtime overnight. As a result, in just half an hour, the production line with glass screens was built, with amazing efficiency. Then, within 3 days, the production line was adjusted, and the output of the new iPhone quickly soared to a daily rate of tens of thousands of units.

The efficiency and flexibility of the Chinese factory shocked all Apple executives. After that, they were conquered by China. Any Apple executives or engineers would never talk about transferring the industrial chain as long as they came to China.

The New York Times finally gave an evaluation: China's manufacturing industry's scale, efficiency and industrial skills are far superior to the United States. However, these are just superficial. Not only these are the only ones in China's manufacturing industry, but also the R&D capabilities of technology are also one of the important reasons why Apple bet on China.

Let me give you another example: In 2007, Jobs launched his first generation iPhone. He showed off a number of innovative functions at the press conference, among which the smooth touch screen amazes many people.

But few people know the technology of this touch screen, which is actually developed by Chenhong Group.

Chenhong Optoelectronics Technology (TPK)

The mainstream touch screen technology at that time was resistive touch screen , which was composed of a glass base layer and a conductive plastic layer. However, the disadvantages of this technology are very obvious. It can only judge a touch point and perform some simple drag and drop judgments. Therefore, the touch screen was more of a gimmick than a practical function at that time.

, and Jobs's idea of ​​the iPhone 1 was a perfect revolutionary product that could operate smoothly without a keyboard, so he could not accept resistive touch screens at all. In order to find better technology, they invested a lot of research and looked for manufacturers to help in Japan and South Korea, but they had never been able to solve this problem.

Until someone introduced Chenhong Group to Jobs, Chenhong had been studying in the touch screen industry for many years, and even the latest "capacitive" touch screen was also studied. capacitive touch screen can realize multi-touch and operate smoothly. It was the most advanced touch screen technology at that time.

In the end, Jiang Chaorui, the founder of Chenhong, almost bet on all his wealth to overcome this problem, so it also became one of Apple's early supply chain companies.

Chenhong can be said to be a microcosm of China's supply chain.

Because Apple's products are designed first, and then the engineer team goes global to find suitable suppliers based on the design, and then Apple cooperates with suppliers to complete the research and development and production of parts.

This process requires ensuring that every supplier must have the world's top strength, not only has its own technology but also has low prices, so every supplier of Apple is very strong and even irreplaceable.

, for example, OFIL , which provides Apple with camera modules.

Official everyone knows that because of the sanctions from the United States, Apple no longer includes it as a component supplier. Ofilicon had no choice but to sell its camera-related business to Wingtech Technology for a huge amount of 2.4 billion yuan.

However, interestingly, after taking over the related business of OFILM cameras, Wingtech Technology turned to become Apple's new supplier. In other words, OFILM's technology has become an indispensable member of Apple.

. In China, there are more and more companies like Ofilm. In the past, we were only responsible for assembly, data cables, mobile phone cases and other low-end accessories. Later, they became important components such as batteries, camera modules, screens, etc., and in terms of technical difficulty, they began to gradually become higher.

Today, China's manufacturing industry has led other countries in all aspects in terms of scale, efficiency, engineer team, industrial skills, energy, etc. In addition to core accessories such as Japan and South Korea, Apple has to rely on China in almost all aspects.

In addition, foreign netizens disassembled the phone and found that the new iPhone 14 actually contains the memory chip produced by my country's Yangtze River Storage . You should know that the core components of advanced semiconductor on Apple phones were always monopolized by the United States, Japan and South Korea, but now we have a share of it.

Why does Apple rely on China more as it transfers its industrial chain? The answer to

is actually very obvious, that is, Chinese technology companies are growing too fast, with more and more technology companies such as OFILM, , BOE , and Yangtze Storage, even exceeding the speed of Apple's transfer.

Apple has transferred a little low-end assembly plant, but the fruit chains of the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries have also been taken away by China, so Apple is becoming increasingly inseparable from China.

But here we also want to explain it to Apple. In fact, they never thought about completely de-Sinicization because China's advantages are too obvious, so it is so obvious that Apple is reluctant to leave.

In 2017, Cook once said that holding an mold engineer meeting in the United States may even be unhappy in the conference room, but if they want to be in China, these mold engineers can fill several football fields.

High efficiency + strong supply chain + huge technical talents. This is the confidence of China's manufacturing industry. Any foreign company will benefit from China's manufacturing industry, and so will Apple. So they don’t want to completely leave China at all. They implement a strategy of supply chain decentralization, to put it bluntly, they don’t put eggs in the same basket.

Of course, this is also the

forced by the trade war and the epidemic in 2018. King Dongwang has always used tariffs as a threat to let Apple return to the United States to establish an assembly factory. Cook was also helpless and was even forced to agree to build three more large factories.

However, anyone with discerning eyes knows that this is impossible, because Apple’s own products are all OEM, so how can it be possible to build three factories at once?

However, the Sino-US trade war has made Cook anxious about the security of Apple's supply chain, so they changed the strategy of designing, supplying globally by the United States, and then producing it to China to the current practice of decentralizing supply chains.

In addition, the epidemic is raging. If the factories are all in China, once the epidemic spreads, it will have a very big impact on Apple's production capacity. Therefore, in order to avoid political and epidemic risks, it is actually a very common thing to expand factories outside China.

Of course, Apple also has factors that take the initiative, because the markets in East Asia and Southeast Asia have grown very significantly over the years.

In 2020, Apple phone sales in India exceeded 3.2 million units for the first time, an increase of 60% over the previous year. In 2021, it increased by 54% again, with sales reaching 5.4 million units. Vietnam, like India, is growing very fast.

So many mobile phone companies will make arrangements here in advance. For example, Chinese companies such as Xiaomi , OPPO, VIVO and even Honor are built in China. It is not surprising that Apple is building a factory here. On the one hand, it is conducive to their expansion of the Indian market, and on the other hand, it is also eyeing the cheap labor here.

To put it bluntly, Apple is an enterprise, and its own interests are the company's main goal. That's why we see that Apple is building large data centers in China and actively recruiting Chinese suppliers and engineers, while also building factories in Vietnam and building supply chains.

Similarly, we don’t need to take Apple too seriously. There is no need to see Apple transfer the industrial chain and criticize China’s manufacturing industry. We should see that the number of suppliers in China is increasing, which already shows that Apple cannot live without China.

instead, our fruit chain should take the initiative to de-apply and reduce its dependence on it. In fact, many companies have already done this, and they bring technology to the automotive industry with a wider market.

is right, I am participating in the 8th season of Knowledge Creator. If you like it, please give me a like

To put it bluntly, Apple is an enterprise, and its own interests are the company's main goal. That's why we see that Apple is building large data centers in China and actively recruiting Chinese suppliers and engineers, while also building factories in Vietnam and building supply chains.

Similarly, we don’t need to take Apple too seriously. There is no need to see Apple transfer the industrial chain and criticize China’s manufacturing industry. We should see that the number of suppliers in China is increasing, which already shows that Apple cannot live without China.

instead, our fruit chain should take the initiative to de-apply and reduce its dependence on it. In fact, many companies have already done this, and they bring technology to the automotive industry with a wider market.

is right, I am participating in the 8th season of Knowledge Creator. If you like it, please give me a like