TechCrunch posted:

---

Apple just announced its Q1 2012 results, and the company booked a $13.06 billion profit on $46.33 billion in revenue, marking the biggest quarter in company history — well over 50 percent larger than its previous record in Q3 2011. Apple sold an astonishing 37.04 million iPhones, 15.43 million iPads and 5.3 million Macs during the quarter, which represent increases of 128 percent, 111 percent, and 26 percent from last year. That's two million more smartphones sold than Samsung shipped last quarter, which is astonishing.

iPod sales were down 21 percent to 15.4 million, continuing their slow decline. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's results. It's an absolute monster of a quarter — handily beating analyst estimates and offering a sharp rebuttal to earnings that missed estimates last quarter.

---

Bowlartz posted:

---

So Apple, a company that uses slave and child labor makes 13 billion in profit = good.

Oil companies make around the same profit and fill our state/federal coffers will billions in revenue from gas taxes alone = all that is evil in the world.



Some things never get old.

---

Bowlartz posted:

---

So Apple, a company that uses slave and child labor makes 13 billion in profit = good.

Oil companies make around the same profit and fill our state/federal coffers will billions in revenue from gas taxes alone = all that is evil in the world.



Some things never get old.

---

Bowlartz posted:

---

So Apple, a company that uses slave and child labor makes 13 billion in profit = good.

Oil companies make around the same profit and fill our state/federal coffers will billions in revenue from gas taxes alone = all that is evil in the world.



Some things never get old.

---

posted:

---

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

---

posted:

---

An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

---

Eager_Igraine posted:

---

posted:

---

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day.

---

---

Sansfear posted:

---

China's middle class revolution will be interesting to behold. They will only put up with the abuse for so long before they start demanding change (some already are, but not enough yet to reach critical mass).

---

B_Shinkicker posted:

---

That Apple Executive is just THRILLED that they can treat thousands of "employees" as slave labor at a moment's notice, even at midnight!

---

Apple Slavemaster posted:

---

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

---

Yukishiro1 posted:

---

This just proves we need to abolish all wage laws and taxes on rich people. Then we can all get paid 17 bucks to work 12 hours a day, too! Jobs for everyone!

---

Yukishiro1 posted:

---

This just proves we need to abolish all wage laws and taxes on rich people. Then we can all get paid 17 bucks to work 12 hours a day, too! Jobs for everyone!

---

Eternal_Midnight posted:

---

I do enjoy all these posts expressing righteous indignation over the working conditions in these factories and how little money they make.


It's almost as if each and every one of you doesn't benefit enormously from such an arrangement.

---

Eternal_Midnight posted:

---

It's almost as if each and every one of you doesn't benefit enormously from such an arrangement.

---

Ptilk posted:

---

You demand your government passes laws that restrict corporations from doing business with countries that allow human rights outrages and limits or restricts products created in those countries from entering yours.

Not that freaking hard. We do it all the time for "safety" reasons.

---

Heladric posted:

---

Lotta dumb people out there buying overpriced, underperforming products.

---

dae_trist posted:

---

China is "successful" because it runs on "cheap labor" and no environmental protections.
the Chinese government subsidizes foreign companies entering the nation.

---

Eager_Igraine posted:

---

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=1

posted:

---

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

---

---

dae_trist posted:

---

China's still relatively poor. People need to stop using GDP growth as a proxy for how "good" the economy is. But their success in development is owed largely to well-placed investments, not "cheap labor". Chinese people are more expensive to hire than Indians, Southeast Asians, most Latin Americans and Africans. They just have better infrastructure so it makes more economic sense to get your stuff made there.

---

smellymotor posted:

---

its all about supply chain

---

eodoll posted:

---

China is the worlds cheap labor pool - thats the role the chinese industry has crafted for itself.

---

SirGarth posted:

---

Other companies do bad things too, so you should stop talking about this company because its my favorite!!!

---

Eager_Igraine posted:

---

SirGarth posted:

---

Other companies do bad things too, so you should stop talking about this company because its my favorite!!!

---

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Also, I'm not exactly sure how this all plays into it but:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16629278

Yeah...

---

SirGarth posted:

---

so as long as you don't perceive a company to "smug" about it, that makes it ok?

like i said, selective outrage. i look forward to hearing how many people get rid of their console systems and audit their home and office electronics.

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Does China still have traffic jams that last for several DAYS on its major thoroughfares?

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Also, I'm not exactly sure how this all plays into it but:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16629278

Yeah...

---

dae_trist posted:

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Does China still have traffic jams that last for several DAYS on its major thoroughfares?

---

In Beijing, I believe. But if China were to ban 70% of cars, you'd hear Americans shrieking about how it's a totalitarian intervention in the free market

---

dae_trist posted:

---

Cawlin posted:

---

Also, I'm not exactly sure how this all plays into it but:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16629278

Yeah...

---

Sometimes their arrests are justified.

---

dae_trist posted:

---

They usually get let out or simply put on house arrest a few years into the sentence. Anyone who wants to derail China's progress in terms of providing for the sick and the poor needs to be killed or maybe tortured, not imprisoned - of course, I'm not saying that's what the accused in this case are doing.

That said the death penalty is on the table for Brad Manning even though his actions have unequivocally yielded good results.

---

Cawlin posted:

---

So it's the number of cars, and not the lack of/poor infrastructure?

---

dae_trist posted:

---

Yes, I disagree with your evangelizing dogma that has created a shit world in which tens of millions starve and die every year, I must clearly be insane. The architects of the greatest humanitarian miracle in human history are also evidently incompetent.

---

Cawlin posted:

---

So it's the number of cars, and not the lack of/poor infrastructure?

---

dae_trist posted:

---

Did you actually use "lack of/poor infrastructure" in a sentence describing a Chinese "Tier 1" city? No, 50% of the air pollution is actually soil. A good half of the remainder is from local power plants, cars and industry, and the remainder comes from other provinces.

But I'm sure someone will find a way to blame the Chinese government for the weather.

---

posted:

---

The official pollution advice suggested the levels on Monday and Tuesday were acceptable. But the alternative readings posted on the internet by the US embassy, from its own monitoring equipment, indicated it was "very unhealthy" and vulnerable groups, including children and the elderly, should not exercise outside.

The US readings reflect stricter pollution standards called PM 2.5 measuring particles less than 2.5 microns wide.

These tiny particles connected with car emissions, power stations and factories can have serious health effects as they travel deep into your lungs.

Beijing's authorities take PM 2.5 readings but don't release them. They only release larger PM 10.0 measurements.

A US embassy cable from 2009 released by Wikileaks said that China's foreign ministry had demanded the US stop publishing its embassy air-quality readings because they were "confusing" and "insulting" and could have "social consequences". The embassy refused.

---

dae_trist posted:

---

But I'm sure someone will find a way to blame the Chinese government for the weather.

---

Scarne posted:

---

dae_trist posted:

---

But I'm sure someone will find a way to blame the Chinese government for the weather.

---

Plant more trees and you'll have less dust from the soil!

---

UN posted:

---

The campaign counted with the participation of 193 countries with China currently in the lead, having planted a total of 2.8 billion trees since 2004. India holds second place with 2.1 billion trees, followed by Ethiopia, Mexico and Turkey.

---