“
When President Obama asked to meet with Steve Jobs, the late Apple boss, his first question was ‘how much would it cost to make the iPhone in the United States, instead of overseas?’ Jobs was characteristically blunt, asserting that ‘those jobs are never coming back’. In point of fact, it’s been estimated that making iPhones exclusively in the US would add around $65 to the cost of each phone – not an unaffordable cost, or an unthinkable drop in margin for Apple, if it meant bringing jobs back home. But American workers aren’t going to be making iPhones anytime soon, because of the need for speed, and scale, in getting the product on to shelves around the world. When Apple assessed the global demand for the iPhone it estimated that it would need almost 9,000 engineers overseeing the production process to meet demand. Their analysts reported that it would take nine months to recruit that many engineers in the US – in China, it took 15 days. It’s these kind of tales that cause US conservative media outlets to graphically describe Asia as ‘eating the lunch’ off the tables of patriotic, if sleep-walking, American citizens. If Apple had chosen to go to India, instead of China, the costs may have been slightly higher, but the supply of suitably qualified engineers would have been just as plentiful. While China may be the world’s biggest manufacturing plant, India is set to lead the way in the industry that poses the biggest threat to western middle-class parents seeking to put their sons or daughters through college: knowledge.
”
”