Now Proview seeks ban on ALL iPads coming out of China Chinese monitor biz Proview, which says it owns the iPad trademark, now hopes to block the import and export of Apple's trendy tablets in the country. Proview International Holdings has already managed to get the expensive fondleslabs pulled out of some shops in China, following a ruling in the Asian nation's courts that found …
The loss of profits that would result by manufacturing the device elsewhere would far exceed the costs of any settlement with Proview.
More importantly, there's no guarantee that manufacturing expertise exists outside of China anymore, especially not in anywhere else which might offer cheap manufacturing.
There are no factories on anywhere near the same scale as Chinese plants. Take a good look at the sheer scale of some of Foxconn and Pegatron's plants and you'll see the problem: they're basically city-sized factories. Just one Foxconn plant has more people working in it than currently live in Guildford.
The only example of manufacturing on a similar scale is Ford, who have a mega-factory that takes in raw materials (steel, rubber, etc.) and spits out complete cars: you'd need to create a brand new supply and logistics chain on a similar scale to that.
In the US, where human labour is entire orders of magnitude more expensive, robots are taking over, but you pay the price in flexibility and capital costs: those robots might not require a salary, but they do require initial purchase (think six figures) plus ongoing servicing and maintenance. It's also harder to repurpose a sandblasting robot cell to perform, say, soldering instead. That's why China's manufacturing conglomerates are so successful.
Foxconn can simply repurpose last year's production line to produce wannabe "me-too" products from other clients. A US factory's production lines, filled with robots instead of humans, will be much harder to repurpose: A robot designed for, say, sandblasting an aluminium casing isn't going to be much use at soldering.
Apple would effectively need to fund the construction, fit-out and tooling of a brand new mega-factory and supply chain, from scratch. If you think Apple would then be dumb enough to hire *people* to do work that a robot can do, you've another think coming. So no, there wouldn't be much benefit to the US unemployment figures either way.
Apple, like Dell, Asus, HP and their ilk, chose China because it offers flexibility and massive economies of scale. Nobody else can crank out products in the quantities demanded by the West, in the timescales demanded by the West, for the prices demanded by the West.
Brands went to Taiwan and then China because labour was less expensive and "green laws" were not even heard of.
THEN they started to be massive.
I do agree with you in that today it would be difficult to make them in the US or Europe.. but only because we have dismantled our factories and we decided not to build massive ones.
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its bit naive of an AC to ignore the fact 99% of Apple's profits comes from selling devices made by slaves/super low income working poor in China Often having to stand up 14 hours straight.
it a bit naive of an AC to ignore the fact that apples partners Foxconn custom built whole mega factories at no initial outlay from apple to get the apple contract to assemble these phones at $10 all in end to end...
and so on, of all the others you can mention ONLY apple make 99% of their mega profits on two products make at the same custom built whole mega factories and ship all that $500 a phone profit outside of china, whereas much of the own brand Android kit profit make and sold in china stays there, and good for them.
LOL adam, seriously ,is that the best you can do, it's not talk, its called real life experience ,get out of your office and try it sometime
you just provided one of the better reasons the working poor all over the world will actually travel hundred's of miles just to get a low paid job, as for standing up for up to 14 hours and al the other points are taken from the facts as known to date in reports if you look,.
OC it appears You have never had that kind of work where you had to stand at a work station and keep up with the machinery (or get a reprimand for falling behind) for hours until change over and OC that change over meant more standing higher up the line doing more repetitive standing work.
many working poor even in the west have had such job's as that work involves a lot of turn over, i did such work as the Trades Union's were abolished back in the day, so worker rights means a lot to me and many others not big talk , real life, try it sometime on a 10 hour shift and not just for a crap 6 weeks of your university break, what's an "ihater" and why would he video and advocate lots of ARM products for years already long before anyone else in the media LOL
"an annoying little lawsuit into a major problem for Cupertino" it is just that the price went up.
If Apple want to play games, then the purchase in in Taiwan was a purchase in China, that's the official line, so are Proview denying that their Taiwan office is just another branch in China.
Some potential fun in this one, for us observing from the sidelines anyway.
Fake meds: fine
Fake milk powder: no problem
Fake watches, DVDs, electronics, capacitors, chips, etc: all good
Original iPad: nope sorry can't export that I'm afraid.
Anyone really believes this will happen?
I suspect Proview has decidedly flown too close to the sun with this one...
If you're gonna have a death penalty, you may as well make it a useful one. I'm surprised they don't do it this way in Texas, to recover the costs of execution and benefit the tax payer.
Anyone remember a certain horror film about transplanting the body parts of a murderer.
Just for the record, I don't support the death penalty, it's just as bad as, if not worse than murder itself.
Larry Niven based the whole of one of his literary universes around a society who 'harvest' body parts from convicted felons. His conclusion was that eventually people would end up being broken up for offences as serious as jay-walking and tax evasion.
Look up "Flatlander" or "Gil the Arm" if you are interested in reading the stories.
I wonder what you would consider "more severe"?
I remember one case of a woman sentenced to 20 years hard labour and then death. Which is more severe than just the usual Chinese "kill them out the back of the court" sentence.
Not big on appeals, the Chinese government. Or freedom. Or basically anything other than fascism dressed up as communism.
Still, mustn't grumble.
History has quite a number of regimes where a conviction resulted in some gruesome fate befalling family and friends (followed by your own demise, natch). I rather suspect that several still exist, though these days it tends not to be written explicitly in the statute books. It's just "understood".
"Larry Niven based the whole of one of his literary universes around a society who 'harvest' body parts from convicted felons. His conclusion was that eventually people would end up being broken up for offences as serious as jay-walking and tax evasion.."
Bloody hell. That's not good.
Glad I don't live in a country where prison labour can essentially be used as cheap slave labour, as I could see a situation where you could end up with a disproportionate amount of your population incarcerated for increasingly minor misdemeanour's..
Or in fact one that would jail people, without trial, for indeterminate lengths of time because they simply didn't like them.
the so called "Original iPad" as you put it , are in fact real life "counterfeit ipad's" if apple want to sell into the massive Chinese markets as we already know they do under that name without owning the proper legal trademark or licensed from the real "Proview Shenzhen" owner, as always in a sellers market "buyer beware".
BTW there are plenty of London bridges for sale if apple want to purchase one from the many vendors claiming to own them going cheap with all the extra cash they are saving forcing Pegatron to take sides building that ASUS Zenbook and other profitable no apple kit.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/02/13/apple_pegatron_pressure/
Apple orders PC builder to 'choose sides' in laptop battle?
I wonder, is Proview friends with Google? LOL!!!
If that means no iPad3 guess I'll have to go for the Transformer Prime (kind'a leaning that way anyway, but can't find one in stock anywhere) - and I'd really like to see what the iPad3 offers, I mean, for me, all that's missing is a working SD slot.
Happy ipad1 owner here, but soz Apple, you created this monster all by yourselves.
I suspect there's a strong case to be made for the theory that all parties involved have, to some extent, been dicks in terms of patent trolling.
Having been on the receiving end of patent-troll bellendery doesn't excuse Apple from initiating more patent-troll bellendery of their own (though no doubt they'd argue that their particular brand of patent-troll bellendery was intuitive and a new paradigm in bellendery design and manufacturing).
"that means no iPad3 guess I'll have to go for the Transformer Prime (kind'a leaning that way anyway, but can't find one in stock)"
The words "can't find one in stock" say it all!
It's nice to see that people aren't just sucked in by Apple sheen and gloss, and they realise that far superior products are available.
"for me, all that's missing is a working SD slot" and for me, a product that doesn't carry a social stigma being seen carrying one!
Like it or not Applites, this is the truth that can't be avoided.
I think Apple and Proview will agree to some licensing agreement soon.
But let's assume Proview is successful in banning exports of the iPad from China, at least for a short period. Wouldn't this be then the precedent for other manufacturers to sue for similar measures , e.g. this or that functionality was invented by EmpireChina Limited first, therefore exports of USAproduct are halted pending the decision of the courts.
Moving to another emerging economy is of no use, because EmpireIndia Private Limited may claim this intellectual property on that product is theirs in India and therefore cannot be exported - pending decision of the courts.
Avoiding these litigations is technically impossible, as they are governed by the WTO, and especially Western countries are very vocal on enforcing intellectual property rights - so practice what you preach.
I made up the countries and the names, no offence - you may insert to any country on the planet.
This may not even be limited to electronic gadgets, how about car components, appliances, software?
Interesting times...
"abusers of patents"
The Long View....
well the west cant really complain, after all when the Chinese wall went up and they closed their borders etc back in the day , the west still managed to get inside, steal and copy their inventions secrets , tweak them here and there and put out counterfeit and own brand products for the masses in the west, when that supply ran out the US took to doing the same to the EU as it is now and so on.
so its just the Chinese and other lower income counties with massive populations turn to do it, with a twist that the west are handing them the ALL goods on a plate as Chinese's cheaper, so why make the stuff yourself when you can get those ancient civilisations to learn your tricks and build the world you want to live in
"How I wish Proview turns out to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung!"
it doesnt matter if they are or not , they as a Chinese inc are allowed to buy up all of Proview if they wish, it all depends if their trademark is worth the expense...
a "what if" scenario if they did , can Samsung make a nice profit from licencing the ipad trademark for all single core A8 ARM devices, some novelty ipad stickers for your Intel inside mac like kits face plate and the collapsibility's are endless if they or anyone had a mind to teach the patent trolls an expensive yet profitable lesson.
the Chinese Govt. don't really care as long s it help them grow and prosper , i forget the Chinese leaders exact words when he choose to take this Chinese profit road but it was essentially anything to help them grow and prosper in the future
not as simple as you think, apple cant just buy ProView as their not Chinese and foreigners cant own Chinese companies outright.
put simply, the Chinese doesnt want to be renting others external countries owned manufacturing , they want you foreigner's to rent off them and their growing property assets, however Samsung or any other Chinese firm could own ProView without a problem assets if their trademarks are worth it to Samsung etc longer term.
There is nothing apple does that the other companies don't do as well and at least in some apple is just protecting their work unlike microsoft who is just out to profit off of android.
That doesn't mean everything apple does is good or acceptable but the hate specifically for them is a unnecessary. It strikes me that a lot of it comes from people too "hip" to use popular products and therefore must hate on the company making them.
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