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DW.com's Becker looks at how much an iPhone would cost if made in the USA. Jason Dedrick of Syracuse University says it would add $20-$30 if final assembly was done in the U.S.. If components and parts were also made in the U.S. this would go up to $80-$90. Other factors are that the production clusters set up by Foxconn have taken three decades to set up and would take time to replicate. President Trump has said Apple should make the iPhones in the U.S. to create jobs. As Foxconn is rapidly adding robots and automation the number of jobs are shrinking in the production process.

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"All I want is freedom for the people,” DJT says said in a phone interview with the Washington Post at around 4 a.m.“I want a safe nation, and that’s what we’re going to have." The nuclear threat from Iran has been the subject of negotiations for years with no tangible results. This nuclear weapons development has led to sanctions and shortages in the economy of Iran with the situation deteriorating and protests in Iran.

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Blackberry maker Research In Motion's will introduce new products to prevent further erosion of market share. Five new smartphones will be introduced, including an all touch screen phone to compete with the iPhone. Smartphones using its new QNX software will not be available till 2012. Meanwhile Apple is bringing out a new version of the iPhone and new smartphone are being released by competitors. RIM's share of global smartphones is down to 12.9% for the 1st quarter of 2011, compared to 19.7% the prior year. In the N. American market RIM's market share for smartphones is down to 16.5%, a big decline from 41.3% in the first quarter of 2010. Missed deadlines for new products are a major problem for RIM in the fast paced environment for new technologies and software with new competitors from related fields.

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AT&T had 4.3 million iPhone activations in the first quarter of 2012, down 43% from the prior quarter. Of the most valuable subscribers who signed up for 2 years AT&T showed 187,000 additions. All but 7000 of these were in tablets. . This indicates that the smartphone market in the U.S. is being saturated. AT&T used the iPhone introduction in 2007 as a way to take subscribers from Verizon and Sprint. That advantage is now fading.

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For years Apple concentrated all its iPhone production in a few factories in China. The Zhenzhou factory with 300,000 employees is one of the largest of the Apple suppliers. These suppliers including Foxconn and Luxshare work witn Apples NPI process in which manufacturing is designed around Apple designs and prototypes. For the first time WSJ reports on protests at the Zhengzhou factory over Covid controls and wages, conditions. Young people in China are no longer keen on working in these conditions and protested. Apple finally recognizes the need to reduce concentration in one country and plans to bring 40 to 45% of the production of iPhones to India. Initially it plans to bring NPI trained suppliers such as Luxshare that have facilities in Vietnam to assemble outside China. Over time suppliers in India will have to develop the needed skills, planning and engineering concentration of people to Make in India what is now Made in China.

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IHS reports show the cost of making the Galaxy S 4 smartphone with 16 gigabytes of flash memory is about $244. This is 15% more than the cost for the Galaxy III and 17% more than Apple iPhone 5 with 16 gigabyte memory. Higher cost is due to better sensors, a better processor, and larger full high-definition display for upgrades. Samsung plans to launch the new phone in April 2013 in 155 countries. Unlike Apple Samsung does its own manufacturing providing it an edge in hardware capabilities.

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With the popularity of Apple iPhones and smartphones, Nokia has lost ground. Its share price is down 73% from 2007 end. It is looking for a new CEO. The lack of new mobile phones to compete with the iPhone and other smartphones and generate the kind of excitement that Apple's iPhone has generated, is Nokia's main problem.

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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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Apple reports a slowdown in iPhone sales, with a less than 1 percent in increase in sales, for fiscal first quarter ending Dec. 26, 2015, over the prior year quarter. Revenue is expected to decline by 11% for the quarter ending in March 2016, over the prior year, first such decline in 13 years. Analysts say Apple will have to reduce gross margins of about 40% to increase sales. Apple CFO Maestri says Apple increased prices in some markets because of the strong dollar. When the stronger dollar is excluded from results for the quarter ending Dec. 26, 2015, sales revenue increased by 8% over prior year quarter, according to Apple. As Apple slows down its shares financial performance is stalled at about $100. Apple tried to present a different picture now that China sales are slowing down- it said that users had "engaged" with 1 billion Apple devices whether iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, in the last 90 days, by downloading an app, song or movie. These services geneated $5.5 billion in revenues for the quarter ending in December, a 15% increase over prior year quarter....

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Did you now there are internet addiction camps to rehabilitate people affected by overuse of internet time, spending time online for hours at a stretch. The BBC looks at one such camp in South Korea. Having such fast internet connections and being one of the most well connected internet countries in the world looked great until one realizes the cost. Being advanced or going faster and faster doesn't mean better without the exercize of needed discrimination of what is best for healthy lives and healthy mindsets. Everything elders once took for granted such as time spent with crafts, sports, outdoor activities, and hobbies, are being given to kids at these internet addiction rehabilitation camps. One kid watched youtube for 18 hours a day and now the way back to mental and physical health is to stop using the iphone or android phone altogether. This maybe of some comfort to countries without the internet connections prevailing in so called advanced countries. Even there the improvements are coming with a cost such as the proliferation of watching Tik Tok from China in India and China with poor quality content that is likely to fragment peoples attention making it harder to lead healthy lives that we once took for granted before the advent of Mr. Job's screen enabled phone. ...

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Apple is in a quandary about what straegy to pursue in the large China market. Apple's pricing depends on its image of bringing in exciting new products. With growth slowing in iPhone sales and lack of new products like the iPhone Apple can go after the market of lower end smartphones to maintain growth. In that segment Apple faces strong competition from manufacturers who make products in-house and have the scale to compete effectively such as Samsung. Other manufacturers such as Lenovo are also surging in this part of the market. Sales figures for the smartphone market give some idea of the problem Apple faces. Smartphone sales for the industry slowed to growth estimated at 41% for 2013, compared to 136% in 2012. In 2014 IDC forecasts growth slowing even further to 17% and by 2015 the smartphone segment looks even less promising with only 12% growth. And much of this growth is likely to go to regional smartphone companies such as Lenovo Group of China, and other brands which are better at competing in the lower priced smartphone segment of below $100, say analysts. Apple sales were 7.9% of the smartphone market in China, Samsung had 15.4%, and Lenovo 13.1%, in the 4th quarter of 2012, according to IDC....

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In the third fiscal quarter ending June 28, 2014, Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones, up 13% from the year ago quarter. Profit reported was $7.75 billion for the quarter, up from $6.9 billion in the prior year quarter. Revenue increased to $37.43 billion from $35.32 billion the prior year quarter. Apple is not experiencing the weakness in smartphone sales that Samsung is seeing. The strong sales comes with increasing sales in China following the distribution deal with China Mobile. iPad sales slowed with sales declining to 13.3 million iPads in the quarter, down 9% from the prior year quarter. While Samsung has difficulty in preventing lower cost competitors such as Xiaomi and Huawei from eroding sales in China Apple sales are increasing. Apple's revenue in China increased by 28% for the quarter. China is a western brand conscious market as seen in sales of U.S. and German made automobiles. Another trend Apple is capitalizing on is the sale of larger screen iPhones. Screens larger than 5 inches make up 20% of iPhones shipped in China, according to IDC, which are estimated to go up to 50% by 2017....

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Apple gets 19% of its sales in China with a manufacturing base that includes 1 million people employed in one Chinese city. In an effort to promote Make in China China is giving Huawei more room to compete with Apple. Huawei is bringing out a new 5G phone as an alternative and has banned use of Aplle iphones in government agencies. This means about 56 million people will have to turn to locally made products. China presents this move as an effort to protect data and cybersecurity. Yet Apple has a share price increase of 46% this year even in an environment in which US and China are restricting the export of key technologies (by US) or critical materials for electric cars (by China). Apple's responses to this have been slow preferring to keep its supply chain the way it is in a strategy based on the short run, with some minor shift to India and Vietnam.

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Issues about how many more jobs are supported by Apple beyond the 47,000 employees in the U.S. Estimates of job creation in China and overseas through supplier networks for iPads, iPhones and other products are as high as 700,000. Apple says it has "created or supported" 514,000 jobs in the U.S. Experts say it is hard to say how many jobs are supported. Of the jobs Apple counted in this number, the consulting group doing the estimate included 257,000 jobs at companies such as Corning that makes the glass for the iPhone, UPS, and a Samsung plant in Texas. The number was generated using a formula of the federal government's Bureau of Economic Analysis and how much money Apple spent on goods and services in the U.S. An additional 210,000 jobs were generated by companies making apps for Apple devices. The consulting company estimated that 45% of the 466,000 app related jobs in the U.S. -using the estimate of such jobs from TechNet- were for Apple apps. Apple released these figures on its website as criticism from the industry and outside mounts about whether Apple is doing enough for jobs in the U.S. Intel's Andy Grove is one of the industry executives who has pointed out that there is much scaling up at home that U.S. companies need to do....

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The difficulties increase for Nokia with decrease in sales in emerging markets as it competes with new models from Huawei at the low end. The launch of the Lumia 900 runs into a software glitch and Nokia offers customers buying the phone from AT&T a $100 rebate until April 21- making the phone free on a two year contract. Nokia's global market share declined from 31% in 2010 to 23% in 2011, according to Gartner Inc. Nokia's dominance in India and the Middle East markets is slipping as low end smart phones with the Android operating system software are replacing Nokia phones. The result is that core mobile phone operations show a 3% negative operating margin in the first quarter, with the outlook for further declining margins in the second quarter of 2012. The Lumia 900 which has Microsoft software has fewer apps than the established Android and iPhone models creating more headwinds for the new smartphone. On April 11, 2012 Nokia shares lost 16% of their value and were down to $4.24.

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With poor sales for the Blackberry Z 10 in 2013, AT&T and Best Buy retailers are discounting the phone to $49 for a refurbished phone, and $99 for a new phone from the original price of $199. Such steep discounting soon after the March 2013 launch of the Z 10 suggests the phone is selling poorly.

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Apple may have peaked in pricing and market share. Apple is not increasing US prices on the new iPhone 15 as it sees a decline in its 19% market share in China. With newer smartphones from competitors Apple wants to avoid an erosion of its share in the US market. One drawback in the 2015 iPhone is the switch to USB ports which means ordering a converter for the lightning cables which Apple prices at $29. New European Union rules have led to the change.