Apple and Foxconn investing billions in a new display plant in the U.S.?

Apple and Foxconn are in talks about a display manufacturing plant in the U.S., Nikkei reports. According to the paper, the two mega corporations are planning to invest billions of dollars to a new facility that would employ tens of thousands.

The founder and chairman of Foxconn Terry Gou estimates that even though the plant would be highly automatized it could bring as many as 30 000 to 50 000 new jobs indirectly. The total cost of the facility could measure in the $7 billion range.

It has been previously reported that Apple has been asking Foxconn what kind of investment a manufacturing plant in the U.S. would require. According to Nikkei, display manufacturer Sharp has also been interested in a U.S. based manufacturing facility.

Bringing blue-collar jobs back to the U.S. was of course one of the main themes in Donald Trump's campaign as well as his inauguration speech three days ago. While it is still far from a sealed deal, this would be a huge victory for the new POTUS. However, Foxconn has estimated that this would definitely raise the prices.

Written by: Matti Robinson @ 23 Jan 2017 12:12

hearme0

Raise prices???

WHY?

...because they can nickel and dime a bunch of Chinese having 1.4 billion of them........can you say "RUDE"!

How about this crapple.....

You bring that f'ing plant here with Foxconn, operate with integrity, PAY PEOPLE what they are worth and righteously for their work and talent as YOU SHOULD BE doing with Americans and DO NOT RAISE THE F'ING PRICES and simply REDUCE your overall MEGA PROFIT for a change and pass that on to the little guy.

Really........6.3 billion for a RECORD qrtly profit in 2016.

That multiplied by 4 is over 25 BILLION in profits.

According to Apple:

Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2017 first quarter:

revenue between $76 billion and $78 billion
gross margin between 38 percent and 38.5 percent
operating expenses between $6.9 billion and $7 billion
other income/(expense) of $400 million
tax rate of 26 percent

Taking this into BASIC account, they have EASILY enough profit to do the right thing and stop screwing their employees and contractors.

Bring this back to U.S.!

Don't raise the prices of the hardware, EAT THAT for a change, show your customers you are flexible and willing to benefit the great good while maintaining lucrative profits............albeit a little less because you would eat those expenses of bringing the plant in-house.

American Biz...............DESPICABLE!

23.1.2017 16:22 #1

KillerBug

While I agree that there is no reason this should increase prices for most consumer electronics that start marked up super-high, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see it happen anyway. It seems that Apple (and other companies but Apple is specifically mentioned in this article) will keep pushing prices up and quality down until people start to abandon them...at least in the case of Apple phones, this does not seem to have happened yet. It happened on the "Pro" desktops a few years ago and it didn't stop them from continuing the pattern, and it seems to be happening on the laptops but that probably don't stop the pattern either. As such, such price increases would happen no matter where the parts were made or how much or little those parts cost to make...if Apple was somehow able to get the next iPhone made for $0.00001 per unit, the price would still be $800+ for the higher-memory version. Note that Samsung does basically the same thing with their phones and those are not the only two.

SO yeah...bring jobs to the country that you are trying to sell your devices in; those people you create jobs for can then buy your product...it's the whole basis of an economy that makes it possible to charge $800 for a phone that really doesn't offer much over a $150 phone. Leaking that money to China just means that now some people in China can afford to buy the $150 phone made by your competitor (or a $100 knock-off of your phone because copyrights are not enforced). If you ever did manage to get a large customer base for $800 phones in China that would just mean that the cheap labor was now somewhere else.

...Or don't eat the price increase...if the whole point of an iPhone is as a status symbol than just increase the price by $50.00 to offset the $2.00 increase in production cost and it becomes more of a status symbol. People will still line up outside the store a week before launch to get the new model. Just don't think putting an american flag on the box will help sales...iPhone users really don't care if they child slave who made their phone has a net outside their building to make suicide more difficult.

24.1.2017 12:45 #2

SoTired

I hate Apple, and refuse to own any of their products. But as long as the iSheep feel the product is giving them enough value that they are willing to pay a premium price, then Apple should charge a premium price. Making money is why they're in business, and I don't begrudge them that.

I do hope the day comes that people realize Apple products aren't worth the premium.

25.1.2017 02:02 #3

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