Apple employees 50,000 people. Foxconn employs 1,000,000 people. So you can have all the innovation you want and tens of thousands of engineers in California benefit, but hundreds of thousands of people benefit in China because the manufacturing has gone there.
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These are pretty serious numbers; even more so in the context of orchestrated technology transfer, and Chinese management that seeks to bring branding and marketing to the home shores. Take the ASUS netbooks as an early sign: after a manufacturing rival won the One Laptop Per Child contract, the, then ASUSTek, decided to, in house, design and market it’s own thin, cheap device, and effectively started the netbook market.
With huge burgeoning markets in India and China, there is no reason to doubt that many of the manufacturing powerhouses (eg. Foxconn) will begin to dominate global technology markets, from design through manufacturing and sales.
From Helen Walters’ AMAZING TUMBLR:
“Journalist and pundit Fareed Zakaria has an update to his book, The Post-American World, due out at the end of the month. For it (and a CNN special report airing tonight), he delved into the world and meaning of innovation—and examined how the United States has a job on its hand to keep up the pace of innovation and stave off the challenges from emerging markets. He described the above quote as the “scariest statistic” he unearthed in the course of his research.
Also, check out the Global Innovation Showcase, just launched by CNN and the New America Foundation to go along with its special report. Featuring the likes of Steven Johnson’s brief history of innovation and political and economic analyst Zachary Karabell on the innovation challenge posed by China, it looks like it might shape up to be an interesting resource.”
(via thoughtyoushouldseethis)