President Donald Trump is pressuring Apple to move iPhone manufacturing from China to the United States. But supply chain experts say the plan faces massive barriers built over decades.
The iPhone is assembled from around 2,700 parts, involving 187 suppliers across 28 countries.
Today, less than 5% of its components are made in America.
High-tech parts come mainly from Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, while final assembly is centred in China.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said this month that “an army of human beings” would now build iPhones in America.
But analysts warn a U.S.-assembled iPhone could cost up to $3,500, far beyond current prices.
Apple's choice to remain anchored in Asia goes beyond cheap labour.
Experts say China offers speed, flexibility, and world-class scale unmatched by any U.S. alternative.
Final assembly is dominated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm with sprawling facilities in China.
Its Zhengzhou iPhone City alone cost $1.5 billion to build and employs 350,000 workers at peak.
Apple is gradually expanding production in India, aiming to diversify risk, but moving full operations to the U.S. would require rebuilding complex supplier ecosystems from scratch.
TechInsights estimates assembling an iPhone costs Apple just $10 per device today.
Ripping up supply chains would erase those efficiencies overnight.
Despite Trump's calls, Apple is seen as highly unlikely to move iPhone assembly to the U.S., according to analysts.
The entrenched networks across China and Southeast Asia are simply too vast, too specialised, and too embedded to replicate quickly.
Apple’s iPhone production remains a symbol of the global economy’s deep integration—one that tariffs and political pressure alone cannot undo.
Russia’s health watchdog said on Friday it is monitoring an anthrax outbreak in Kazakhstan’s Akmola region, where two villages were quarantined af...
EBRD stated that Ukraine urgently needs new generation capacity after Russian attacks severely damaged its power sector, creating a significant shortf...
Belarus will play an active part in next month’s United Nations conference for landlocked developing countries in Turkmenistan, Foreign Minister Mak...
Thirty PKK members, half of them women, publicly destroyed their guns on Friday in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah province, the clearest sign yet that the outl...
Germany and the UK will sign a new 'friendship treaty' next week to deepen cooperation on foreign policy, security, and economic ties amid global chal...
In a significant development for the tech industry, Indonesia and Apple have reportedly reached an agreement to lift the country's ban on the iPhone 16. According to Bloomberg News, which cited people familiar with the matter, the deal could be signed as early as this week.
Google on Wednesday rolled out an update for iOS that lets users search what’s on their screen with a simple gesture. The new feature, available in both the Google Chrome and Google Search apps, is similar to Android’s built-in “Circle to Search” function.
Australian researchers have pioneered a low-cost and scalable plasma-based method to produce ammonia gas directly from air, offering a green alternative to the traditional fossil fuel-dependent Haber-Bosch process.
A series of earthquakes have struck Guatemala on Tuesday afternoon, leading authorities to advise residents to evacuate from buildings as a precaution against possible aftershocks.
Archaeologists have uncovered a 3,500-year-old city in northern Peru that likely served as a key trade hub connecting ancient coastal, Andean, and Amazonian cultures.
A deadly mass shooting early on Monday (7 July) in Philadelphia's Grays Ferry neighbourhood left three men dead and nine others wounded, including teenagers, as more than 100 shots were fired.
On July 4, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Khankendi, reaffirming the deep-rooted alliance between the two nations.
Around 2,145 senior-ranking employees at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are set to leave under a push to shed staff, Politico reported on Wednesday citing documents obtained by the news outlet.
A woman from Guadeloupe has become the only known person in the world with a newly discovered blood group, which French scientists have named “Gwada negative.”
Australian researchers have created a groundbreaking “biological AI” platform that could revolutionise drug discovery by rapidly evolving molecules within mammalian cells.
Matt Turnbull, executive producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing, faced criticism after a LinkedIn post recommending artificial intelligence tools to help employees deal with the emotional impact of job cuts.
A Chinese-made robot dog named Black Panther has reached a top speed of 10.3 metres per second (34 feet per second), setting a new world record for robotic dogs and approaching the speed of elite human sprinters, according to state media Xinhua News.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment