Foxconn and the future is Brazil
Over a year ago I wrote...
The future is Brazil. Young, brown, bustling, growing, transforming, spreading, boisterous, crowded, violent, hyperconnected and increasingly wealthy. And the future starts in 2016. This is the year of the Olympic Games, held for the first time ever, in the "developing world"; Brazil. This is the year of the end of the potential second term of the transformative presidency of Barack Obama. This is the year of a billion plus smartphones and the demarcation of wealth creation and opportunity shifting from the old to the new. This is the year India rockets a man into space. This is the year, 2016, when all entitlement/non discretionary spending consumes nearly 90 cents of every US government dollar.
This site focuses on smartphones. In America, we no longer have the capability of actually making these devices. Taiwan does. China does. Thus, I've talked several times about Foxconn, the giant electronics maker, based in Taiwan that employs thousands of Chinese (all living in quiet desperation, apparently).
And what do these have in common?
Well, maybe Brazil can rise up to compete with Taiwan and China in this area.
Billionaire Eike Batista has a radically dream, though: he wants to steal Apple manufacturing from China and bring it to his home country of Brazil.
Batista made his millions in the mining industry, and he’s using that money to construct a $1.6 billion manufacturing plant that spreads over 90 square miles. What he wants is for Apple to bring its manufacturing to Brazil, which would help radically stimulate the local economy. If Apple’s not interested, Batista’s second choice partner would be BMW.
Maybe this is something that Apple should consider. Cupertino’s manufacturing relationship with Foxconn has been rife with bad press stemming from reported abuse of employees on the hands of Foxconn management. Even if those reports aren’t entirely accurate, Foxconn has been a PR headache for Apple: if Brazil can come close to Foxconn’s margins, maybe it’s time to consider a change.
Screw the bad press. Certainly, we would benefit from having the ability to get our most advanced, covetous personal technologies from more than one country: