Why Offshored Jobs Won't Come Back on Shore

choi

(A) Service

Indian Outsourcing. Financial Times, Jan 25, 2012 (in The Lex Column).
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indian-outsourcing/904230/0

(B) Manufacturing
(1)
(a) Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, In China, the Human Costs That Are Built Into an iPad. New York Times, Jan 26, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/2 ... rkers-in-china.html
(b) For Chinese commentary with Caixin magazine, please go to left margin and, under the Related heading, seek:
"The Lede Blog: Chinese Readers on the ‘iEconomy’ (January 25, 2012)."

(2) Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work; Apple's experience shows why jobs are flowing to China. New York Times, Jan 22, 2012 (front page)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/2 ... d-middle-class.html

Quote:

at web page 3: "For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass [they had used plastic] because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare. Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

at web page 4: " Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea. But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple’s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.

My comment:
(a) I can not identify the glass-cutting Chinese company, despite search in the Web.
(b) US Steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel
(United States Steel Corporation; public: NYSE; J . Morgan and the attorney Elbert H Gary founded US Steel in 1901 by combining Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with other steelworks)
(c) The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The ... Pacific_Tea_Company
(better known as A & P; public; founded by George Gilman in 1859; Headquarters  Montvale, New Jersey; The seeds for A&P's 50 year fall from the world's largest retailer to a relatively small regional food chain and bankruptcy were planted in the 1950s and 1960s; then Wal-Mart came along)
(d) Bethlehem Steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethelem_Steel
(1857–2003; based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based US Steel; private; founded by Augustus Wolle)
(e) ITT Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation
(founded by Sosthenes Behn and his brother Hernand, in 1920 as International Telephone & Telegraph; now a diversified manufacturing company; public: NYSE; Headquarters White Plains, New York)

Quote: "ITT divested its telecommunications assets in 1986, and in 1995 spun off its non-manufacturing divisions, later to be purchased by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. In 1996, the current company was founded as a spinoff of the original ITT Corporation as ITT Industries, Inc. and changed its name to ITT Corporation in 2006.
(f) Sperry Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperry_Corporation
(founded in 1910 as the Sperry Gyroscope Company by Elmer Ambrose Sperry to manufacture navigation equipment, chiefly his own inventions; In 1955 Sperry acquired Remington Rand and renamed itself Sperry Rand; now part of Northrop Grumman Corporation, as a worldwide supplier of navigation, communication, information and automation systems for commercial marine and naval markets)
(g) International Harvester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Harvester
(a manufacturer of agricultural machinery and vehicles; In 1902, JP Morgan merged the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and Deering Harvester Company, along with three smaller agricultural equipment firms, to form International Harvester;  International Harvester sold off its agricultural division in 1985 and renamed the company Navistar International Corporation in 1986 [making vehicles])  


(3)
(a) The glass at issue is Corning Gorilla Glass.
http://www.corninggorillaglass.com

In mid-January at Consumer Electronics Show, Corning Gorilla Glass 2 was unveiled, which is 20% thinner but as tough as its predecessor.  

(b) Corning Incorporated
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corning_Incorporated
(Gorilla Glass, which is a high-strength alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass used as a protective cover glass offering scratch resistance and durability in many handheld devices with touchscreens, went on sale in 2008)
(c) Adam Lashinsky, Insights on the Writing of Steve Jobs. Fortune, Dec 27, 2011
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011 ... saacson-steve-jobs/
("Walter Isaacson shares new information on his best-selling biography of the Apple founder.")

Read only the three paragraphs, by searching the term "Gorilla glass."

(d) Ben Dobbin, 1962 Glass Could Be Corning's Next Bonanza Seller. Associated Press, Aug 1, 2010.
http://www.boston.com/business/t ... ext_bonanza_seller/
(e) Christina Bonnington, New Apple patent would shield against broken glass. Wired, Nov 21, 2011.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/te ... -patents/index.html
('a tunable shock mount that would sit between the glass and the body of the device")

Note: tunable (adj): "capable of being tuned <tunable lasers>"
www.m-w.com


(4) Regarding the second quotation in the NY Times report numbered (B)(2) above.

Evan Ramstad anf Jung-Ah Lee, Logical Step: Samsung Shifts Its Focus for Chips. Wall Street Journal, Jan 26, 2012.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 80302089777454.html

Quote:

"when Samsung releases its fourth-quarter earnings on Friday [tomorrow], it is widely expected to reaveal a 2012 expansion plan that for the first time spends more money on logic chips than memory chips.

"Samsung's memory-chip sales fell about 10% last year to roughly $23 billion, while its logic-chip sales increased about around 70% to about $10 billion. That means the size of Samsung's logic business is approaching that of Texas Instruments Inc and Qualcomm Inc--mahor providers of cellphone chips. Samsung's business still is less than one-fourth the size of Intel's, whose microprocessors are used in most personal computers.

"Samsung hasn't revealed how much of its logic-chip revenue comes from building chips designed by others, known in the trade as foundry work. Analysys believe Samsung has three factories making logic chips designed by other companies and one plant for its own chips.

"Samsung last month said it reached maximum productionat its newest logic-chip factory in Austin in just five months, a rapid ramp-up for a chip plant of any size. Analysists say the factory, which employs about 1,100 people, is producing the A5 chip used in Apple's latest devices. samsung declines to comment on customers but it has pumped $9 billion into memory and logic production lines in Austin.

Note:
(a) This report is worth reading (though I have outlined the key points0. With logic chip revenue of $10bn, that division of Samsung's is just smaller than TSMC.
(b) Definitions of "logic chip":
(i) Encyclopedia, PC Magazine, undated.
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=logic+chip&i=46269,00.asp
("A processor or controller chip. Logic always implies "processing," in which specific operations are performed or instructions are executed to perform a variety of operations. Contrast with memory chip. See logic device and discrete logic.")
(ii) McGraw-Hill Science & Technology Dictionary, undated.
http://www.answers.com/topic/logic-chip
("(computer science) An integrated circuit that performs logic functions."