Lenovo To Make Tablets In U.S.

oopspowsurprise said:
I love how people use the stupid "I love people who..." line to make their opinion seem more valid, when it's not.
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The quality on the Y580 is hands down on a whole order of higher quality then my wife's 17r SE. The keyboard on the Y580 is the best laptop keyboard I've ever used, the screen is magnificent, and it feels rock solid to hold.

Every Lenovo I've purchased or recommended has had 1 thing in common, and that is quality.
 
And the question of the day is....if a Chinese company can make tablets in the U.S., why can't Apple and HP?
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Because you can't make 65 million tablets a year in the US.

No matter how much money you spend, no matter how high the wages, you would not be able to pull together the workforce necessary to make a tenth that many. There are not enough workers in the US that are willing to do that kind of work for any wage.

Lenovo can do it in the US because they're not operating on that scale. I went looking for sales numbers of Lenovo tablets in the US, but I couldn't find any. All I could find is that they are big in China - they're #2 in tablet sales there, selling 200,000 tablets to achieve 8 percent of the market (guess who has 72% of the market there).
 
Climber said:
There is no bloatware, well they do have their software for the camera, one key recovery and some other minor crap but I deleted very little compared to my wife's dell. Also if you bought the Lenovo y580 from amazon like I did it took 1 day to get to me.
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Oh, that's very nice news then, thanks for the info.
 
evilsofa said:
Because you can't make 65 million tablets a year in the US.

No matter how much money you spend, no matter how high the wages, you would not be able to pull together the workforce necessary to make a tenth that many. There are not enough workers in the US that are willing to do that kind of work for any wage.

Lenovo can do it in the US because they're not operating on that scale. I went looking for sales numbers of Lenovo tablets in the US, but I couldn't find any. All I could find is that they are big in China - they're #2 in tablet sales there, selling 200,000 tablets to achieve 8 percent of the market (guess who has 72% of the market there).
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I hope you are 14 or younger.
 
My understanding is that the Foxconn assembly processes for the iPhone/iPad are fairly manual so it might not be realistic to manufacture 65 million tablets a year in the US (also few of the materials have any US suppliers so you would still import most of the materials) ... as to the Lenovo volumes, they only plan to hire 115 workers for this so we probably aren't talking about extraordinary volumes of tablets in NC ;)
 
bacon said:
No as opposed to paying a lot more than other similar jobs would pay in the state. Basically paying what the job is worth.
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And what is the job worth? If there was no one making the product there would be no product to sell. If there was no product to sell, then no one makes a dime.

So why is the CEO worth millions of dollars important but the guy making the product is only worth struggle-to-feed-his-family-wages important?
 
Say you make 65 million tablets at $200 and 10% goes to labor costs
So $20x65,000,000 = $1.3 billion

Say you pay workers $200,000 each which is silly and get can hire
1.3 billion / 200,000 = 6500 workers. or 13,000 workers at $100,000 or 26,000 workers at $50,000.

The foxconn plant had about 2-3 thousand go on strike for a sense check.

And even if labor is more expensive, you shift you investment to automation which brings labor costs down.

The difference between manufacture in the US or China isn't practicality of it, its about a few percentage points more in profit. That combined with other benefits of being in China. Subsidies from the Chinese government who want you to setup there and the advantages of their currency fixing.
 
jpm100 said:
Say you make 65 million tablets at $200 and 10% goes to labor costs
So $20x65,000,000 = $1.3 billion

Say you pay workers $200,000 each which is silly and get can hire
1.3 billion / 200,000 = 6500 workers. or 13,000 workers at $100,000 or 26,000 workers at $50,000.

The foxconn plant had about 2-3 thousand go on strike for a sense check.

And even if labor is more expensive, you shift you investment to automation which brings labor costs down.

The difference between manufacture in the US or China isn't practicality of it, its about a few percentage points more in profit. That combined with other benefits of being in China. Subsidies from the Chinese government who want you to setup there and the advantages of their currency fixing.
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I agree that there could be more manufacturing in the US but it isn't just the profit element that prevents some of the large scale manufacturing. Some elements that China, and other offshore locations can offer:

LARGE SCALE manufacturing - Foxconn employs more than 1,000,000 people and some of their largest factories might have 50,000 people ... there are few US locations that would support that scale

Logistics - materials, workers, and airports/docks are all within the industrialized zones in developing nations like China, Malaysia, Thailand, and others ... this provides enormous savings in warehouse and transportation costs for Just In Time manufacturers

Free Trade Zones - these zones are built for export and have lots of tax advantages

If an industrial nation, like the USA, wants to compete with this they would need to do a number of things (and you see some states doing this already):

Build industrial or free trade zones with compatible companies all within short distance of each other

Build housing areas supported by the companies or the states (similar to military bases) where cost effective housing and transportation can be provided for the workers

Get rid of union laws and make the work zones "right to work" areas

Limit building for domestic consumption and build for export

if the USA or other countries start doing this then it would be feasible to move Large Scale Manufacturing back to the home countries ... without those changes then small scale manufacturing or boutique manufacturing are better fits for these countries

Just my take ;)
 
I really don't get why Americans are so fussed about where things are manufactured, or reasoning that things made by monkeys in the US would be of superior quality to things made by monkeys in China. Last time I checked American cars aren't exactly famous for their reliability. But what's really bad is the bitching and moaning about China not opening up their economy to the world but want one way trade for the US.
 
kbrickley said:
I agree that there could be more manufacturing in the US but it isn't just the profit element that prevents some of the large scale manufacturing. Some elements that China, and other offshore locations can offer:

LARGE SCALE manufacturing - Foxconn employs more than 1,000,000 people and some of their largest factories might have 50,000 people ... there are few US locations that would support that scale

Logistics - materials, workers, and airports/docks are all within the industrialized zones in developing nations like China, Malaysia, Thailand, and others ... this provides enormous savings in warehouse and transportation costs for Just In Time manufacturers

Free Trade Zones - these zones are built for export and have lots of tax advantages

If an industrial nation, like the USA, wants to compete with this they would need to do a number of things (and you see some states doing this already):

Build industrial or free trade zones with compatible companies all within short distance of each other

Build housing areas supported by the companies or the states (similar to military bases) where cost effective housing and transportation can be provided for the workers

Get rid of union laws and make the work zones "right to work" areas

Limit building for domestic consumption and build for export

if the USA or other countries start doing this then it would be feasible to move Large Scale Manufacturing back to the home countries ... without those changes then small scale manufacturing or boutique manufacturing are better fits for these countries

Just my take ;)
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Or, in a much simpler way, as done in Brazil, raise import taxes on certain items you want to have manufactured in-country, so that it becomes cheaper to produce locally.
 
Can you handle the truth??

America is headed for 3rd world status quickly. Obamanomics are just the final nails in the coffin but you can blame decades of policies that have driven the majority of manufacturing off shore, and made us dependent on other countries. The final blow-out will be when the money itself collapse. Like most 3rd world countries they try to print money to prosperity. When you have nothing of value to back up the money supply it will inevitably become worthless in the order of pennies on the dollar.
 
sviola said:
Or, in a much simpler way, as done in Brazil, raise import taxes on certain items you want to have manufactured in-country, so that it becomes cheaper to produce locally.
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The US can't do that unless they want to break various free trade agreements and withdraw from the WTO ... tariffs won't solve this problem ;)
 
slh28 said:
I really don't get why Americans are so fussed about where things are manufactured, or reasoning that things made by monkeys in the US would be of superior quality to things made by monkeys in China. Last time I checked American cars aren't exactly famous for their reliability. But what's really bad is the bitching and moaning about China not opening up their economy to the world but want one way trade for the US.
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Quality isn't the issue. Not having a job and having most of the money spent on goods sent straight out of the country is. We're being sucked dry pretty much. It's kind of like how towns, like the one I live in, disintegrate when companies like Walmart come to move in, except it applies to the entire nation.

In July of this year the trade deficit for the U.S. was $57.3 billion on goods and $42 billion over-all. If I'm reading the data right, that's $42 billion dollars poorer the country gets every year.* It cannot be sustained. http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html

*That's in July, the numbers vary.
 
prime2515102 said:
As apposed to paying slave wages with no benefits.
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They (the workers) would not be slaves as they are free to leave at anytime. No one is forcing anyone to work for Lenovo or to take a job there. If you do not like the pay, you do not have to take the job; if they cannot find enough people to work at the rates they are offering, they will be forced to raise those rates.
 
damicatz said:
They (the workers) would not be slaves as they are free to leave at anytime. No one is forcing anyone to work for Lenovo or to take a job there. If you do not like the pay, you do not have to take the job; if they cannot find enough people to work at the rates they are offering, they will be forced to raise those rates.
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Or they can leave collective bargaining alone and achieve the same result. In the mean time people won't go hungry or lose their homes etc.
 
Regardless of the manufacturing capacity, its the fact that the company has decided to build in the US that's of note. You're telling me Apple couldn't build the Nano solely in the US? How much cash on hand do they have again?
 
kbrickley said:
The US can't do that unless they want to break various free trade agreements and withdraw from the WTO ... tariffs won't solve this problem ;)
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Apparently, there are ways to do that without breaking agreements or WTO rules, as recently Mercosur countries (including Brazil) raised their taxes on 100 products by 35%, much to the complaint of the US and EU, but without breaking any rules.
 
I would bet dollars for doughnuts that they simply assemble the devices here.
Everything will be made in china I bet.
 
Don't confuse these 2 terms: "assemble" and "manufacture".
Those 115 Lenovo employees won't be "manufacturing" anything. Only "assembly" of mostly Asian-made hardware, and installation of Windows software onto the hard drives.
By doing "final assembly" work in North Carolina, they avoid paying a worthwhile percentage of the product value as import fees.
HP does virtually the same maneuver, doing "final assembly" of PC's and laptops in operations in Plainfield, Indiana and Ontario, California. The employees of HP's PC assembly locations are actually about 30% Foxconn employees, 30% HP employees, and the remaining employees work for a 3rd party staffing company based in Chicago, Illinois.
 
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