In other news, Foxconn has teething pains in India.
The media doesn’t care about the nuts and bolts, but if anyone read my past posts on this topic, then they will know nothing in this article is “news”.
1. Chinese government has spent a lot of money in infrastructure to support businesses like Foxconn. Much of it on the government’s own dime. (Either provincial or central)
2. Chinese government has spent a lot of money building vocational schools so workers have knowledge base for these kinds of jobs. Those infamous recruiters that go to rural areas to attract the undereducated that are portrayed in MSM as human rights violators for some reason. With experience, India might be able to make up some of the knowledge gap, but without greater and reliable support, the Indian plants will always be behind as the new processes will be developed in China first. This is how it is currently, the new models only get made in India about 6 months after Chinese production.
3. There is no local supply chain for parts. I posted a link to Apple’s own supplier transparency report. Only 2 or 3 parts suppliers are in India, everything else is imported.
As I said before, this is not to say India can’t accomplish their industrial goals, but there are literally no shortcuts here. Only possibility is taking advantage of lower cost machinery made available by China’s development, much in the way China used lower cost Korean and Taiwan equipment (relative to Japan and Germany)