Report: senior management at Apple rebuffed some operations execs' suggestion to relocate part of its manufacturing from China to Vietnam as early as 2015
Production on Apple's devices has been stymied in recent weeks due to delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak in China. Source: Wall Street Journal .
MacRumorsJuli Clover
Context & Ripple Effects
This report closes a loop that Apple's own later actions reopened. Back in 2015, senior management turned down operations executives who wanted part of manufacturing moved out of China; five years on, with COVID-19 delaying iPhone production preparation inside Chinese factories, the cost of that concentration is visible in real time.
The subsequent arc is well documented: by mid-2022 Apple was telling suppliers it wanted to boost output outside China, focused on India and Vietnam, citing Beijing's strict anti-COVID policy (per the Wall Street Journal), and by December it had asked Foxconn to begin the first MacBook production in Vietnam. The 2015 rejection matters because it shows the pivot was a known option years before a pandemic forced it.
First-order effects
Operations executives' diversification case is effectively vindicated: the same disruption they warned about is now stalling device production, giving their internal argument fresh weight at Apple.
Second-order effects
Suppliers such as Foxconn are pulled into building Vietnamese capacity at Apple's request, while Vietnam's own COVID outbreaks and border controls become the next bottleneck for Apple, Google, and Amazon's parallel shifts.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, supply chain design shifts from optimizing for China's unmatched production depth toward deliberate geographic redundancy — accepting higher costs and slower ramps as insurance against single-country concentration.
The trend: Electronics manufacturing is moving from China-concentrated efficiency toward multi-country resilience, with pandemics and policy shocks converting a decade-old internal debate into industry-standard practice.
Apple wanted to make the iPhone 11 in India, where it already makes some devices, but couldn't get it done. Lack of enough skilled labor. Infrastructure not good enough. Turned to China instead. https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Funny that the reality doesn't match the ridiculous US manufacturing narrative that Apple and Trump were trying to spin last year https://www.wsj.com/...
Tim Cook and Apple bet everything on China—then coronavirus hit. Quarantines, tariffs and slumping sales have caused agitation about the company's strategy of assembling most of its products there. @trippmickle @Kubota_Yoko https://www.wsj.com/...
We need tariffs on Apple products. Tim Cook's huge margins come from the CCP's low labor standards and poor environmental controls. https://www.wsj.com/...
“When it came time to choose where to make a new model of iPhone analysts expect Apple to launch in the coming weeks, China got the nod."The resilience of China & its manufacturing powerhouse is reconfirmed by Apple's decision despite tariffs +Coronavirus. https://www.wsj.com/...
Last year, Apple tested a plan to make the iPhone 11 in India, but it halted the effort before setting up a single manufacturing line—India wasn't ready to supply skilled labor or the infrastructure Apple needed. It made the iPhone 11 in China instead. https://www.wsj.com/...
“A clean break with China is impossible. Apple relies on a workforce of more than three million indirect workers in China...migrant workers in China...exceed Vietnam's total population of 100 million.” Granular, classic WSJ A1 read on the China dilemma https://www.wsj.com/...
Apple's reliance on China has long frustrated staff—and more recently investors. The coronavirus represents Apple's third major setback there in as many years, including the U.S.-China trade war and slowing iPhone sales in the country. https://www.wsj.com/...
“No executive will admit in a public forum: We should have thought about” the vulnerability to China. “But from this point on, there are no excuses.” @trippmickle @Kubota_Yoko https://www.wsj.com/...
“A clean break with China is impossible. .. The number of migrant workers in China, who do much of Apple's production, exceed Vietnam's total population of 100 million.” $AAPL https://twitter.com/...
I'm calling bullshit here. Uses the total number of migrant workers in China, which is irrelevant, as reason production can't be moved? https://twitter.com/...