Apple is planning to leave its manufacturing base in China and shift production of its cash cow iPhone to India and Vietnam. What does this mean for Austria as an industrial location? At any rate, more than can be gleaned from this headline alone.

Not only the newspaper Standard has reported on this: In recent weeks, iPhone manufacturer Apple has accelerated its plans to withdraw parts of its production from China. Still, one thing needs to be noted: The development of the devices still takes place in the USA – as it has from the beginning. “Only” production has been outsourced to low-wage countries.

What impact does this have on product development?

If a subsidiary is used only for production, an exodus is the case when profits, for whatever reason, are no longer sufficient. The shareholders usually don’t care what happens to the site. However, sites where product development takes place are the least at risk. The impact on them should therefore be minimal to almost non-existent.

Production in Austria

There are also production sites in Austria that belong to foreign groups and where product development is abroad. This is a combination that opens the door to the kind of relocations now being demonstrated by Apple. I see this combination as something to be avoided as far as possible. But how can it be prevented? And it is clearly up to the politicians. How, follows at my next blog.

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