Why iPhone production won't be moving here soon

LOS ANGELES — So what goes into making and shipping an iPhone? A lot, as the New York Times just discovered.

There’s a fascinating piece in the Times about the journey of an iPhone from the factory to the retail store.

If you didn’t catch it, let me fill you in on some of the bullet points.

— About half of the 200 million-plus iPhones made each year come from the FoxConn facility in central China.

— Employees at that facility are paid the equivalent of $1.90 an hour.

— The facility produces 350 iPhones per minute, or 500,000 per day.

— The finished iPhones leave the factory by truck, and head three miles to the airport, where some 150,000 units are packed on a Boeing 747 and flown to Anchorage, Ala., where the plane refuels. It then goes off to Louisville, Ky., headed to a distribution facility.

There’s always talk about why doesn’t Apple build iPhones here?

I believe the $1.90 an hour labor wage should answer that question.

There are approximately 350,000 employees working at the Foxconn plant. Multiply 350K x $1.90 x 8 hours an hour and you get a daily labor fee of about $5.32 million. If the workers were in the United States, and paid $15 an hour, the daily labor costs would be $42 million.

While I believe the Made in America movement is real, I doubt consumers would be willing to pay double — or more — for their smartphones.

There’s also skills. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said iPhones are produced in China for efficiency. Employees are taught manufacturing and speed skills they don’t get here.

That’s a problem and it would be interesting to see if anything changes here over the next four years during the Trump Administration, which has pushed heavily for tariffs from China and Mexico.

But for now, when you’re sending a text, reading a Facebook update, or taking a photo on your iPhone, take a second and think about that poor Chinese worker, making just $1.90 an hour and churning out 500,000 iPhones a day.

I’ll pay the extra to have them produced here if you will.

What are your thoughts? Let’s chat about it on Twitter, where I’m @jeffersongraham. 

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