The Information reports Thursday on Apple’s growing relationships with Chinese electronics manufacturers, explaining that Apple has increased its reliance on Chinese partners, both as a way of cutting costs as well as to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party.
Earlier this month, The Information reported a secret deal between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chinese Communist Party officials in which Apple committed to investing more than $275 billion in China over a period of five years in exchange for regulatory exemptions.
Wayne Ma for The Information:
Luxshare has the potential to unseat Foxconn as Apple’s top supplier. The Chinese company already exceeds Foxconn’s main publicly listed unit in terms of market capitalization, though Foxconn generated roughly $105 billion from Apple in 2020—more than 10 times Luxshare’s haul. But in terms of valuation, Luxshare has also eclipsed major Apple contractors such as Quanta Computer, Pegatron and Wistron, all of which are headquartered in Taiwan. Foxconn has become increasingly concerned about Luxshare’s meteoric rise, including its significantly higher net profit margin, going so far as to form a task force to study the company, Reuters previously reported…
In shifting more business to Chinese companies, Cook, the architect of Apple’s supply chain in China, is fulfilling his pledge to Beijing to expand its domestic tech industry, which will help the country reduce its reliance on companies based outside the mainland, including Taiwan — a country China considers a renegade region. A year after Cook signed the economic agreement with China, Luxshare became the first Chinese company to secure a final assembly contract for a major Apple product, the AirPods, ending the dominance of Taiwanese firms.
Apple’s moves also might win over more Chinese consumers, which at times have shunned Apple in favor of local brands like Huawei based on nationalism. Apple generates nearly 20% of its revenue from the country.
Technovanguard Take: Apple’s perfidious “leadership” continues to disappoint.
Athletes, so many actors, so many celebrities… are just scared to say a word because they care too much about their endorsement deals, their contract situations, their movies sales, but I feel like everything that they’re trying to get from the Chinese Communist Party is not more important than morals, values, and principles.
We need to be the voice of all of those innocent people out there who don’t have a voice… while we’re speaking [now], the genocide is happening. It’s so important to be the voice of all of those people in concentration camps – almost 2 million people… what they’re going through is heartbreaking.
So, I don’t care what you offer me. I don’t care. It is important to stand up for what’s right.
— Enes Kanter Freedom
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