Chapter 4
Australia to Zanzibar: No Country for Old Products
“Designed by Apple in California.”
Those five words are embossed on countless devices around the world. Those are words for consumers to lust after, but they mask a global journey beyond their initial design in Cupertino, California:
Manufacturing iPhones involves nine companies, which are located in the PRC (People's Republic of China), the Republic of Korea, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. The major producers and suppliers of iPhone parts and components include Toshiba, Samsung, Infineon, Broadcom, Numunyx, Murata, Dialog Semiconductor, Cirrus Logic, etc. All iPhone components produced by these companies are shipped to Foxconn, a company from Taipei, China located in Shenzhen, PRC, for assembly into final products and then exported to the U.S. and the rest of the world.1
That was iPhone version 1.0. Later Apple phones and devices have used different suppliers and different countries.
On the customer front, when Apple introduced the 3G version of the iPhone in 2008, it did so in 22 countries, with more than 50 other countries following over the next few months. The excitement was universal:
In Hong Kong, designer Ho Kak-yin, 31, wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jealous?” was first in line in a queue of about 100 inside a Hong Kong shopping mall. “I'm very excited. It's very amazing,” Ho said, after lining up two hours ahead of the kickoff. Hundreds queued outside stores in New Zealand's main cities got their iPhones earlier ...
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