Fantastic, looking forward to the day when the iPhones and iPads I buy every year are made anywhere but China.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AirPods Pro Starting to Be Assembled in Vietnam
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Why? The phones are expertly assembled, or at least the ones I've acquired have been well made indeed.
Why should anyone want to pay way more for the learning curve for some person in Bolivia or Portugal or someplace to make iPhones? Especially now during the covid-19 pandemic, where people are not even sure they can make the rent once the stimulus programs and extra unemployment assistance programs come to an end.
Apple moving the iPhone chain would in no way be the same as shifting the Airpod Pro assembly to Vietnam.
I'd rather see the iPhone build stay in China, and the Chinese middle class be the ones bringing increased political pressure on their own leadership regarding their government.
Whatever happened to the USA minding its own business. All of a sudden all this drumbeating about China bad China bad. What's bad is that. The drumbeating! It's not diplomatic. It's not economically advantageous to us. It's not serving anyone including the people to whom 45 is directing the noise. And it's certainly not having good effect on China as far as pressuring it to operate with a less heavy hand regarding human rights. Look at what just went down in Hong Kong for example. Prellude to a heavier hand.
I'm fine w/ Apple deciding to assemble the Airpod Pro in Vietnam for whatever are its stated or other reasons. I just don't see why that should cause anyone to think (or to wish!) that Apple's about to walk out of China and start making $2500 iPhones in East Podunk, USA... right after it imports some skilled Chinese workers to show us how it's done.
Who will be in the new iPhone market then, pray tell? Not us (since most of us will not be making iPhones at better pay than working at a supermarket as a checkout clerk). And not the Chinese middle class, since their unemployment rate will just have gone up, plus China will have slapped a killer tariff on the thing for import anyway.
VIETNAM BELONGS TO THE CHINESE COMMUNIST NATIONALISTIC REGIME ! SO NO DIVERSITY ! Its just a favour from CCP - China to the Communist military centralised Vietnamese Government to get some money under the hand by tax and favours ! same then with stolen girls - casinos and mining. ! all runned by chinese ! and if nobody knows half of Vietnamese are chinese decent ! so no difference !
if you go to Shanghai. you can buy 100 000 thousands ! of original apple products on the market with a serial number engraved - but not registered by Apple - to be part of the official production !
this is how you do business in china ! corrupt ! if one guy has an illegal batch of laptops fallen of the truck which happens very day ! he makes more money then 3. apple. Stores in Shanghai at that day ! he sells simply 10 000 MacBook Pro 16 of the truck for 40 % off the price ! www.iMac.ly for e.g. the person who organises the truck is the brother of the guy who gives the business license to Apple to be allowed to stay there and to use their own slaves !
800 mill chines x. 60 usd per month ! 400 mil 600 usd per month ! 100 mill 6000 Usd per month. 100 mill 60 000 per month ! 1 mill 6 mill per month ! xi Jing pings cousin owns a 340 meter tall tower build by tax money !
all this is highly tolerated by apple for market penetration !
Last edited:
That strategy has gone as far as it can. The Chinese population has basically been tamed and will be for at least another generation. The elite are all co-opted. And really, the vast majority of China is accepting of their overlords.
The good thing is that China has internalized the concept that the only valid set of rules are the ones set by the West, for the most part. That only leaves Iran and North Korea outside the fold.
You can totally clothe yourself without Chinese made products. Heck you can even narrow it down to N. America if you wanted.
Y'all better wake up. You're getting way ahead of yourselves compared to where industry is still situated.
www.sourcify.com
The Top 10 Products Manufactured In China in 2018 - Sourcify
We increasingly live in a service economy, and the exponential advancements in technology over the last 30 years will keep the global manufacturing marketplace in flux. Despite the dread that can inspire for older workers, traditional manufacturing remains a vital part of the business world...
www.sourcify.com
Mostly just to see how all the experts stand up here, as they have little clue of the complexities and intricacies of the global market. As they say empty vessels make the most noise... Currently US cant resolve COVID-19, let alone killing it's consumerist focused supply chain with no rational alternative.
Q-6
Good, don’t walk but run from manufacturing anything in China.
Apple has been seeking to add geographic diversity to its supply chain for some time now, with a shift of some production of the AirPods lineup to Vietnam being one significant step for the company.
Apple reportedly began trialing production of regular AirPods in Vietnam almost a year ago, and it was reported in December that Apple's AirPods suppliers were looking to line up financing to expand production.
And just two weeks ago, Nikkei reported that mass production of regular AirPods in Vietnam had started in March.At the time, Nikkei said that the production shift did "not yet include" the higher-end AirPods Pro, but it now appears that AirPods Pro production has indeed begun in Vietnam as several MacRumors readers including @alixrezax on Twitter and "rhyzome" in our forums have reported this week receiving their AirPods Pro with "Assembled in Vietnam" shown on the charging cases.
Vietnam has long been a hotbed for Apple's audio accessory production, with even older models like wired EarPods having been produced in the country, and it looks like there's no sign of a slowdown. In fact, a report earlier this week claimed that Apple's over-ear "AirPods Studio" headphones will be partly produced in Vietnam from their debut for the first time, with shipments expected to begin in June or July.
Production of Apple products in Vietnam may also be expanding to the iPhone, as DigiTimes reported yesterday that Apple has asked its iPhone manufacturing partners to expand production in India and Vietnam. Key partner Foxconn already has significant assembly facilities in the country.
Article Link: AirPods Pro Starting to Be Assembled in Vietnam
Oh my gosh.
Here's a brief history of the Vietnam war:
USA invades Vietnam completely unprovoked, purely on ideological grounds due to the USA's dislike of "communism".
USA splatters Vietnam from head to toe with napalm and agent orange, leaving a trail of dead and burnt babies, and poisoned land.
USA completely outnumbers and outguns Viet Cong jungle guerrilla army, but fails to break them, and abandons fight with tail between it's legs.
After what the Vietnamese people have been through, I'm sure they'd be amused at derogatory comments about communism, and the implied moral superiority of capitalist USA.
So it's made by Chinese factories (with Chinese level pollution) and Chinese workers (sweatshop style) IN Vietnam?
You love this because...? You do know that Anker is a Chinese company right?
Yay! One communist country to the next. How about manufacturing in countries that have free people!
This is the American, liberal view. Ask the South Vietnamese what they though of the North Vietnamese and you'd get a different answer. The Vietnamese I know don't care about that ***** now, they just want to get rich and make a better life for their children.
I suspect it’s pretty much that, plenty of companies big and small are basically slapping the made in Vietnam logo to dodge any tariffs
To everyone who says welcoming the manufacturing of AirPods Pro back to USA, given the chance, would you willing to sit down in an assembly line operated by a USA company, and manufacture AirPods Pro for $10/hr 12 hours a day? Empty words are only going to be empty words no matter how many times they are repeated. Show the commitment when the situation calls for it.
True. Farmers can't find people to pick their crops. People that are so dead set against immigrants SHOULD be the first in the fields filling in for them.
In high school I worked two summers on farms, and worked alongside immigrants. They were decent people. All of them were there waiting in the morning, and often worked later at night. One family was using ladders to continue working the fields after everyone else had left. US workers stampede the door at 4:59PM.
I worked a 'union' job at an electronics firm. They had quotas for every 'job' in the plant. One 'job' (they called them jobs for some reason) was putting a plastic piece in a 'fitting', popping a spring in it, and putting a copper plated contact in the 'ram', and hitting two buttons to drop the ram and insert the contact into the plastic piece. I broke quota, full day quota, by lunch time. They would assign me another 'job', and I usually broke quota on that one by 5P. So they put me on a 'job' that involved putting a piece in a multi head machine that drilled holes in each side, and the table indexed. So it was a set, paced, job. The first week, I put out more parts on that machine than anyone else even with it being indexed! I was not setting a good example. I found out a way to jam the drill, making it a manufacturing issue that would slow me down, because maintenance would take up to 45 minutes to come and 'fix' the jam. Then I started fixing the jam myself, and the maintenance people loved me. I also got to the point where I would swap my own drill bits. The union HATED me! Hated me with a white hot rage. I was not hired at the end of my probation. The day before I left, a woman drove a stud through her thumb to get workman's comp! That was 'American Labor' in the early 80's. *sigh*
Sane people need to figure out how to instill a 'work ethic' in America. I don't know how possible that is anymore.
Interesting observations and not necessarily a union’s fault. Similar trends are seen in other well developed countries too. The higher the education and the better off people are the more they long for jobs that require studies rather than manual labour work.
I should have explained that better. I wrote a paper for a college class on my union experience. In that facility, the union was very much controlled by the corporation, and people that were friends of the many stewards got away with so much. If you pissed of the clique, they rained hell down on you, and management approved of it. There was also a 'services' racket that supposedly ran in the women's rest rooms during lunch, with management getting a cut. I was horrified when I found that out. It was the most disgusting experience I've ever had in a workplace, and that includes hauling 100 pound rolls of wire through swamps exploring for oil. Being 'fired' wasn't a bad thing. I had gotten far enough in the probationary period, they even had me fitted with rose colored magnification glasses, and after all that, they threatened to sue me for not paying for them. They cost $5.00 through a quantity discount at the local optometry shop. They made hundreds a month apparently. I never did pay for them. *shrug*
Unions had a purpose in the beginning, and have a place now with businesses trying to force people to go back to work and not providing meaningful support and protections. A small piece of plexiglass is no match for a virus and members of the public determined to spread it as far as they can.
I'm sure you're probably right. Try going to Vietnam and asking the same question of anyone who had someone they love slaughtered by the USA's unprovoked invasion, and see if you get the same answer.
And yes, regardless, everyone wants to get rich and make a better life for their children, it's human instinct. That doesn't mean they are cool with an unprovoked slaughter based on some insane holier-than-thou ideology.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-communism, it's a completely flawed and failed idea, and it doesn't suit human instinct (it kills our need to achieve and excel, aka individual responsibility). However, capitalism is also a completely failed idea, and also doesn't suit human instinct (our need for community, our need to look after each other when we are sick, old, or have bad luck, aka collective responsibility) as is evidenced by the massive government debts racked up from endless corporate bailouts, subsidies, and tax loopholes for the rich. The most successful idea appears to be democratic socialism (balances individual and collective responsibility), but the ultra rich who benefit the most from capitalism have successfully turned "socialism" into a word as evil as "communism" in the USA, and the citizens refuse to look at it objectively, and continue to let the ultra rich bend them over and take them for all they're worth, and slowly turn them into slaves. The rest of the western world, who are much closer to democratic socialism, look on in dismay, as the US citizens reject universal healthcare and education, and let them both be turned into massive profiteering rackets for the rich, and happily let their own children rack up massive student debts, and stress to the eyeballs about the cost of healthcare. The argument given is that it's too expensive, without realising it's only too expensive because it's become a massive profiteering racket. The democratic socialist countries legislate against the profiteering, and healthcare is then easily cheap enough to make universal and stress free, and the total cost is a fraction of what the USA citizens pay. Yes, it's paid for by taxes, so taxes are higher, but the average Joe in the USA ends up with less in the pocket after their hospital bills and education debt take out what they'd save in taxes plus much more. Where does the extra money go? Into the pockets of the ultra rich who own all the hospitals and universities and every industry that services them. You are getting conned, "socialism" is not evil, it's the best friend that you need but keep rejecting.
MANY unskilled and uneducated laborers could do this job, and happily too. Sitting comfy in an AC/heated room doing a job that requires very little training and no brainpower/formal education.