The number of retards believing this figure is insane
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Come on, Forbes. If you're going to try to threaten me with a good time (because the smartphone market and Apple simultaneously imploding would be a VERY good time), at least try to make it believable.
They're factoring in the cost of all the HR Karen's who want a half million a year to do zoom meetings.
As an apple user I would love nothing more
Let me guess, they took the NRE of all the lines that produce anything that goes into an iPhone and divided by the number of units sold in a year? Or did they not even bother with that and just make it up?
You don't hate bloggers enough.
Edit: It's even more retarded. Their logic is:
They took the price of an iPhone and multiplied it by 100. With no source for the numbers other than "precision tooling is hard and America would have to re-learn it."
Wouldn't precision tooling be done by machines
Real men burn their transistors into the silicone waffle themselves using flint and steel.
Silicone? Kids these days wouldn't know what to do with a clay wafer even if there were no other way to access pornhub anywhere on the planet.
FLINT AND STEEL
You have to have guys who can build and set up and maintain and operate those machines and be taught things, and for 40+ years we've done everything we can to steer those kinds of guys away from anything to do with manufacturing, so your potential manufacturing employee pool is going to have a lot of junkies and non-white guys in it. It might be fixable but it probably won't be fixable in under 2 years, which could turn out badly in the next election, and if we lose that one then everything Trump has done will be thrown out by President Newsom/Buttigieg/AOC in 2028.
That's the most immediate problem, the last generation of high IQ, highly motivated White men died off or retired without passing anything on. Already the tech infrastructure that postwar society depended on is reaching Atlantis-tier mythical Magitek in comparison to the cut-rate "work" done by illegals and H1B jeets.
Then we steer them back with dump trucks full of cash.
I also accept gold, guns, steel, brass and heirloom seeds.
Precision machining still exists in America, it's just all focused towards aerospace and weapons manufacturing.
Apple would simply have to pay such people a wage competitive with what they receive from aerospace and weapons production. Which would be a lot but not hit the bottom line of an individual iPhone that much given that it's mostly to do with people who have experience setting up automated factories, CAD/CAM programming etc, rather than producing a single unit of whatever.
The article is also dumb given that they're pretending the unit cost of an iPhone is $3000 rather than accurately understanding that the actual cost is vastly less and Apple simply massively overcharges, and could take a hit to their profit margin while onshoring production, or (more likely) offset the cost to their users and it'd be more like $3500 or $4000 rather than $30000 (ridiculous made up number with nothing backing it, obviously).
if india can do it, I'm sure america can
Good. Maby they stop deliberately making them run slower ''to avoid reducing battery life'', make it so we can repair them, and change the battery more easily.
I miss replaceable phone batteries. Always the first part to go if you aren't clumsy.
I consoomed a new tablet because after 6 years the battery couldn't keep voltage anymore.
Also Google wouldn't let me access necessary updates because ''your device is not supported'' ( anymore ) so more and more programs wouldn't work. It wasen't a processing power problem. It was planned obsolescence.
Could still have been used for pictures and the programs not needing updates... if the battery was replaceable.
No matter how delicately you pryed the back cover open, it had adhesive, and the dried-up weak little plastic pins would snap off or be damaged. ( It was going to the recycling center anyway so I tried opening it ).
I find it rather messed up that all those ressources put into a piece of electronics is made so it's going to break and/or be unusable after 5 years.
The handheld console model I got on second hand market is explicitly stated by the manufacturer ( Nintendo ) that the battery is non-replaceable ( N2DS XL console ). They deliberately made it so hard as to be considered not fixable by either not giving a fk about the design, or to save a dollar or two on manufacturing costs. All the previous models have easily replaceable batteries. And so easy to check if the battery is swelling in those models.
Pisses me off. And it only got worse when Nintendo moved-on to the Switch. You know how USB-C charging is basically a retard-proof universal standart? Nintendo managed to fuck it up and charging a Switch with something other than their proprietary cables and docks has a significant chance to damage the console because they made something retarded with their charging board.
Back to phones... there are shops that offer battery replacement for phones. Expect to pay $70 - $100+ for the service. With the right tools you can do it yourself for cheaper ( obviously with the risk of breaking your phone ).
By the time you need to change the battery, it's likely you can get a new phone that will outperform your old one for less than $200, so paying someone with experience to change the battery for you is not worth it.
I 'member when the Scandi countries led in mobile tech development.
...how is that even an argument? don't we usually produce the precision tooling here in the first place?
maybe i'm out of the loop on this, but that was my understanding.
Because they need some reason to justify aiding the demolition of the USA without feeling like traitors.
hey, i could be wrong, maybe we don't actually make the precision tooling any more...
We're witnessing two things again:
The MSM has learned nothing and will continue to openly and unapologetically lie to hurt Trump and his followers/supporters.
The average person still believes most anything the MSM tells them in spite of all the previous Trump propaganda being dismissed or disproven, and all the lies surrounding Covid, the lockdowns, and the "vaccines."
It's very hard for me to maintain a hopeful demeanor under these circumstances.
Even today, at work, I heard a discussion about vaccines and covid, and one guy mentioned that people still caught it because not everyone got vaccinated because "they believe what they read on the internet". Coming from someone who likely believes everything he sees on TV.
Ironically, the ''peer-reviewed studies'' the allegedly educated read are avaliable on the Internet, and they show the more often people got the injections, the more often they caught covid.
At least 2 studies that I am aware of had these results. One comparing large groups of people over years, another focussing on kids vaxed vs unvaxed, which showed natural immunity was superior, vaccine immunity was weaker and declined so fast after 20 weeks the odds flipped into increased risk of infection.
And that an injection after natural immunity, wiped the natural immunity and after 22 weeks you would also end-up with higher risk of infections than the unvaxxed kids.
But listen to CNN instead. You'll be ''informed''.
You don't get it. MY VACCINE DOESNT WORK UNLESS YOU GET VACCINATED TOO!!😡
It costs literally $10 to manufacture an iPhone in China. The problem isn't manufacturing cost, it's Apple's markup.
Yeah, they could afford it. These are old 2012 numbers but at that time it was:
51% profit
33% components
14% other costs
2% manufacturing (the $10 he's talking about)
They could easily deal with US manufacturing costs. The unfortunate part is nearly all the components would still be foreign-made.
That's just labor cost, according to comment section.
You have to keep in mind that a lot of people who have platforms now are 2-3 generations removed from jobs where you had to actually pick things up or make things, none of their friends work those kinds of jobs, and they've been taught that factory work is for low class, stupid people. They don't know anything about manufacturing and you're not going to be able to explain it to them, you might as well be talking about gender politics with an African cow herder.
It would cost 1k-2k retail for a top end smartphone, and costs would go down substantially if America was cleaned up (red tape, etc). America used to be manufacturing king, and this is still possible even if we account for automation replacing jobs.
...even if this were true, I fail to see a downside.
Then import them from Chyna with the tariffs and get them at a steal!
Granted, less of a steal than now but still much, MUCH cheaper than US made iPhones if your figures are correct.
Better yet, get off the Internet and leave it to us nerds, geeks and incels who don't need the latest filters to Snapchat our Fitbit rates to our followers with a wishlist on Amazon for our top donors to gift us.
I'm kinda retarded...but nowhere near retarded enough to believe this absolute nonsense.
Same people that think if you slapped rich people with 90% tax rates they'd just suck it up and pay it out of their own pockets.
Uhhh… Forbes didn’t say “$30,000” - more like “$3000”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2025/04/06/apple-iphone-16-pro-max-price-will-it-really-cost-over-2000-from-memorial-day/
It’s still a stupid talking point but there’s no need to hyperbole the number.
Okay... I'm waiting for the downside.
Foxconn puts the labour cost of assembling, quality assurance, and testing of the phone at $15-$30 with a listed pay of $2.88/hour. The 15-30 is based on the 2% to 5% of the phone's costs being labour.
Americans taking the same 5-10 hours might add another $120-$240 to the cost of the phone if they're being paid well for assembly line work. Assuming Apple wants the same profit per unit. If they'll take less, then that amount drops.
The YouTube video they got the 400 hours of work from is from an old article that contradicts Foxconn's statements and job postings. The 400 hours factors in the metallurgy, chip fabrication, shipping, etc. without accounting for the 390-395 hours being spend hauling many chips, fabricating batches, and shit like that.