china

Showing 17 posts tagged china

“If I were Amazon I’d be selling the hardware, not the content.”

Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research Group, speaking to Bloomberg.

It’s interesting just how poorly Amazon is doing in China. This can be seen two ways: either they’re being out-Amazon’d there by Alibaba and will never be able to crack the country (just as eBay couldn’t). Or the massive upside if they are able to crack China eventually.

But, as Rein’s quote indicates, Amazon may have to flip its content-driven model. It’s hard to subsidize hardware with content sales when people refuse to pay for content.

The Insourcing Boom

Chales Fishman for The Atlantic:

GE wasn’t just able to hold the retail sticker to the “China price.” It beat that price by nearly 20 percent. The China-made GeoSpring retailed for $1,599. The Louisville-made GeoSpring retails for $1,299.

Time-to-market has also improved, greatly. It used to take five weeks to get the GeoSpring water heaters from the factory to U.S. retailers—four weeks on the boat from China and one week dockside to clear customs. Today, the water heaters—and the dishwashers and refrigerators—move straight from the manufacturing buildings to Appliance Park’s warehouse out back, from which they can be delivered to Lowe’s and Home Depot. Total time from factory to warehouse: 30 minutes.

American manufacturing seems poised for a comeback. Not for everything, but for a lot of things.

The Retraction Hammer Comes Down

John Gruber is all over the fallout of the This American Life/Mike Daisey fiasco.

The New York Times ran an op-ed by Daisey about his fabricated tales (the day after Steve Jobs passed away, no less). CBS News had a report in January widely citing Daisey.

So far, this all appears to be unrelated to the separate NYT article that kicked off the “iEconomy” series. But is there any question that Daisey’s initial “reports” at least in part led to these subsequent reports?

Reports that seemed to focus solely on Apple for no real reason beyond the fact that they’re now the largest tech company in the world with a possible blindspot thanks to Daisey’s story. 

Reports filled with suggestions that Tim Cook called “patently false and offensive”.

Retracting "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory"

Holy shit this is bad. That’s all you can really say. This episode was easily the most widely circulated in the tech community for obvious reasons. And it generated thousands of other related stories.

Host Ira Glass:

I have difficult news. We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China - which we broadcast in January - contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth. 

It appears that Daisey pulled a Stephen Glass (no relation to Ira, pure coincidence):

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.

"Spouting Nonsense"

Tim Worstall, a Forbes contributor, absolutely rips apart the anti-Apple tone of the recent stories about Chinese factory conditions. 

This, alongside Tim Cook’s response and the letter to The New York Times from BSR President and CEO Aron Cramer refuting just about everything attributed to an anonymous “BSR consultant” in the most recent NYT story, certainly makes it seem even more like the laser-focus on Apple here was simply unwarranted.

Worstall’s best line is his last one:

Boycotting Apple for better Foxconn wages and conditions is like having sex for virginity. Entirely counter-productive and exactly the wrong thing to be doing.

[via The Brooks Review]

“We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word.”

Tim Cook responding to the NYT piece about awful working conditions in Chinese factories where many Apple products are assembled. 

It’s not a response to the press, it’s a response to the Apple team, which Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac was able to get ahold of. 

It’s a good response, and the right one. I’m still just ultimately not sure how much it matters in the grand scheme of things. The real problems go far beyond Apple.