Continue the path of diversification of production by Apple and, after seeing how the Cupertino-based company is betting heavily on India to free itself from the Chinese iPhone supply chain, a new Nikkei Asia report suggests how the Californian company is looking at the Vietnam for the production of part of the MacBooks that will be released in 2023.
The reasons behind this choice are always the same and primarily concern the will to leave China – or in any case to greatly reduce dependence on the country – in order to avoid getting embroiled in the possible tariff war between Beijing and Washington, but not only. He also weighs the local government’s iron fist on the issue of managing the pandemic, since the China’s Zero COVID policy caused major problems for iPhone production, such as the case of the Zhengzhou factory.
In this last episode in particular, Apple also had to deal with the bad publicity caused by the proximity of its brand to a protest involving local workers, forced to respect inhumane rules in order to continue working. The Cupertino-based company aims a lot at taking care of its image of protecting and defending the rights of the workers of its partner companies – Foxconn in this case -, but has often had to deal with the impossibility of intervening in Chinese matters.
Over the past few years Apple has aimed to move at least part of the production of each product outside of China, in order to become increasingly independent, however this has not been possible for MacBooks, as the complexity of the production chain has prevented the company and Foxconn from relocating production. It seems though that now most of the problems are behind us and that from 2023 it will be possible to start making MacBooks also in Vietnamafter at least two years of preparation.
The situation of the Chinese supply chain has changed radically in recent times and it seems that we have now reached a point of no return. More and more companies are looking for alternative solutions and the role of the Asian giant, once the largest manufacturing plant in the world.
