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China's tariffs on US products could be called self-respect tariffs as US exports to China are small compared to China's $1 trillion surplus a year. $143 billion mainly oilseeds and grains! US business not willing to rely on US labor created the outshoring that built Chinese industrial growth, shipping out technology in the process, that created this situation. Consultants to Apple at the time such as myself bringing Total Quality of Management from Japan to the US, could see the failure of production quality at the Colorado Springs plant just before Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. About 20-25% of PC product was defective on the production lines seen with my own eyes. Looking back I believe it was not just the workers but the managers and engineering that needed to guide and motivate the workers with new ways to build in quality control. These were the days when Apple's Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to revamp production and ship it to China. American workers got blamed. Yet as Jim Carlton shows in "Apple the Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders," by 1996 a new German CEO Michael Spindler 1993-1996 had driven the company to the ground. The struggle with Microsoft gave Jobs an idea- by shifting production to a low cost location he could make the high margins to outinvest all competitors with new products-ipods, iphones, ipads. There is nothing wrong with American workers and their craftsmanship. Timeline- Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997-1998 Tim Cook is hired from Compaq to revamp manufacturing in 1998 1999-2000 - the strategy is made to shift all of the production to China. Jobs could generate the margins and quality to challenge Microsoft, and profits to invest in new products 2020 -   the weakness of the strategy is apparent with supply side shock for chips and computers with the pandemic stopping shipping 2024 - after taking small steps to shift production to India does little to shift back to America 2025- Apple facing serious tariffs and the country's mood shifting to Make in the USA tells the new US president DJT it will invest $500 billion to shift production back to America. ...

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In the apps area Apple's iPhone has a huge lead over RIM's Blackberry device. Apple has 225,000 apps, with 15,000 added each week. RIM's App World store shows only 7000 apps. Apps stores generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Apple compared to about $10 million for RIM. One problem is that an app that takes a month for software programmers, takes three times as long for the Blackberry.

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Apple will continue to take 30% of the subscription price for customers Apple brings to its App store. Apple's policy for news subscription services also requires these services to keep prices at the Apple app store no higher than prices on the news subscription service's own websites.

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The planned merger of Random House owned by Bertelsmann, and Penguin owned by Pearson, creates the largest consumer book publisher in the world with a 25% market share. Bertelsmann will control 53% of the new entity, and Pearson 47%. The merger will help the new entity better handle the challenges presented by the shift to electronic books and internet retailing, and respond to the power of large companes such as Apple, Amazon and Google in this field. This creates pressure for mergers among the other large publishers, Hatchette owned by Lagardere in France, HarperCollins a part of News Corporation, Macmillan part of Georg von Holtzbrinck in Germany, and Simon & Schuster a part of CBS.

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India's Aakash tablet priced at $42 for the Indian market at subsidized 50% by the Indian governmnt for students at colleges and universities in India.

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David Segal takes a detailed look inside Apple's retail stores in the U.S. and talks with employees at different stores to find out what its like working as an hourly employee at an Apple store. World wide Apple's 327 global stores sold $16 billion in Apple products. Per employee the sales are about $473,000, but at an hourly rate of about $12 the average employee makes about $25,000 per year. After recent wage raises this could be up to about $36,000. The National Retail Federation says electronics stores have about an average of $206,000 in sales per employee. Contrary to what most people may think most of Apple's employees are not engineers and other professionals, about 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in the U.S. work as hourly employees in the retail stores. Most are young people in the early 20's, single, with health insurance provided by Apple not costing as much for that age group. There is no career path and most leave after a couple of years. Because of the Apple mystique and the drive to create new user friendly products there are many young people looking for this kind of temporary work, especially now with high unemployment. ...

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The different strategies of Apple and Samsung in getting to the point where the two companies now dominate the smartphone market. Whereas Apple makes only one phone, its iPhone, Samsung's strategy is to have multiple phones in each price segment. It has five levels of Android based phones, with 2-3 models in each price segment. Samsung also benefits from doing its own maufacturing. When faced with a number of technologies Samsung's strategy is to bet on all of the technologies until one of them emerges as a winner, and then concentrate resources on that technology. It uses a similiar strategy for televisions. Apple by contrast places more emphasis on original design and profit margins over sales, gaining sales without eroding margins by being the first innovator in the market. It also has its own unique arrangement for manufacturing at lowcost with Foxconn in China that supports its high margins. Apple is secretive about its designs and promotes its brand heavily with its own retail stores. Apple also uses its innovative edge as leverage to steer profits away from carriers. Analyst estimates are that carriers such as AT&T and Verizon pay about $400 per iPhone to subsidize its cost because this is the only way to get customers into their retail stores. IDC estimates are that the smartphone market is $219 billon in 2012. Both companies are very close in volume- IDC estimates Apple shipped 93.2 million smartphones in 2011, compared to Samsung's 94 million units. Apple has market share of 23.5% in the fourth quarter 2012, up from 16% in 2010. Samsung has 22.8%, up from 9.4% in 2010. Apple and Samsung have together taken 91% of operating profits of all cellphone companies in the fourth quarter, an increase of 30% from 2011, according to Strategy Analytics....

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A recovery in Intel's business of making microprocessors for PC's. Computer demand from corporate customers, medium and small businesses is increasing. Intel showed a 40% increase in profit for the 2nd quarter of 2014. Demand for tablets is softening and buyers are using large smartphones instead of the smaller tablets. Intel CEO Krzanich, says the installed base of PC's that is about 4 years old is about 600 million strong, and is refreshing for these business customers. Intel is also shipping chips for tablets with plans to ship chips for 40 million tablets in 2014. The Internet of Things group, making chips for non-computer devices, showed an increase of 24% in revenue. So far Intel shares are up 20% in the first half of 2014. Intel plans to add $20 billion to its stock buyback plan and plans to repurchase about $4 billion of its shares in the 3rd quarter of 2014.

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Intel Corp's overreliance on the PC market which is declining. About three fourths of Intel Corp. revenue is from the PC market. Intel stuck to its strategy of selling at higher margins to PC manufacturers and only gradually made the shift to smartphones and tablets. Intel was late to see the challenge from lower cost suppliers of chips for mobile phones and videogames. The quality of chips from these suppliers has improved to the point where they supply most of the chips worldwide for mobile phones and tablets. The late move into mobile devices has hurt performance of Intel. Net income declined to $2 billion in the 2nd quarter 2013, a 29% decline from the previous year. Revenue was down to $12.8 billion in the 2nd quarter, a decline of 5% from the prior year. Intel's new strategy is to pursue the lower end of the PC and tablet market with new chips planned for Dec. 2013 on notebook computers at prices in $300 range, and tablets in the $150 range. The new Intel CEO Mr. Krzanich is focussing on costcutting and other improvements....

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IBM performance may be affected by the shift to the cloud computing environment. Businesses increasingly prefer to rent computing capabilities and software in smaller packages and easier implementation than the costly software packages IBM sells. IBM shares declined by 8% on April 19, 2013 after revenues declined by 5% in 1st quarter 2013.

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In India 70% of smartphones sold in 2015 cost less than $150. Apple's market share in India is really small at about 2%. Apple iPhone sales were up 56% in the 1st quarter of 2016 over the same quarter in 2015, according to CEO Tim Cook. iPhones cost about $300-$1000 without a data plan in India reducing the size of the market. In May 2016 Apple applied for approval from the Indian government to sell refurbished or certified iPhones at lower cost. In India the best selling iPhone is the older 5S which costs about $300. It makes up 50% of iPhone sales in India for 1st quarter in 2016, according to Counterpoint. Apple has no model at the low end, as the SE model will cost even more at $500. The Indian market is growing at 26% in 2016 over prior year, making it the next largest market after China. Another approach Apple is taking is seeking approval to open its own retail stores and sell online. A waiver has been given by the government for using locally made parts. Apple's high prices and margins remain a significant barrier in opening up the Indian market, when lower priced Korean and Chinese smartphone models offer attractive options to price conscious Indian buyers....

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Shipments of LG phones were up 54% in the 1st quarter of 2008 from a year ago, about 4 times the average growth of 14% in the industry., according to Strategy Analytics. The market share goes up to 8.6% from 6.4%. This puts it near overtaking Motorola for 3rd place ater Nokia and Samsung. Its biggest hit so far is the Chocolate, a skinny phone that looks like a chocolate barwith a dial pad that glows red. About 18 million have been sold worldwide sine introduction in May 2006. It also developed a pricey handset called Prada designed with the Italian fashion house and introduced in March of 2007. What is interesting is the way LG has approached product development. The Chocolate's creator Skott Ahn got the top job at the LG cell phone business unit in early 2007. And he has been put in charge of all areas of design developmet with the authority to make decisions in the way he would run this business. Ahn doubled the headcount of designers to 150 and engineers to 4000. He launched an inhouse design competition. The winner of the 2008 competition is the Secret, made from sleek yet sturdy carbon fiber and tempered glass and with a 5 megapixel camera and software to let users create their own music videos. This phone was intorduced in Europe this month. LG's profits on cell phones are expected to double to $2 billion according to Mirae Securities in Seoul, with a 50% jump in sales, and the stock is up 57%....

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Apple has 15.8% of the home computer market by revenue. Apple has two thirds of its PC's as portable or laptops while the Intel/Microsoft PC's are only 50% portables. Apples sales are growing at 35% a year whereas Intel/microsoft Pc's are growing at 5% a year. Apple is really poised to grow. It plans to introduce new versions of it Leopard Operating System frequently for the next 10years, whereas Microsoft is slow to introduce new versions and Aple's Ultimate Leopard Operating System sells for $129 Microsoft Vista Ultimate version sells for $250. Apple PC's sell for higher prices so Apple revenues from its market share are much higher. Apple is poised to grow especially with the younger ipod and i phone users of the next generation. Innovation continues to drive Apple's progress . Jobs talks about the new class of interface Apple created with multitouch interface on the iPhone version of the OS X, which Jobs says simplifies the task of controlling or directing a computer.

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Intel expects to rebound in its chip sales with its new products- the Ivy Bridge line for ultra thin notebooks called Ultrabooks (about 100 designs of Ultrabooks expected in 2012-2013), and the new Xeon chip for servers to handle the surge in internet data. The new Windows 8 for tablet type devices may also boost sales of new convertible devices expected on the market that have features of both tablets and notebooks. Intel gross margin declined slightly from 64% to 62% in the first quarter 2012. CEO Otellini says demand is strong in emerging markets, and for tablet devices using Intel chips.