Apple will return to the production of products in the United States

Apple will return to the production of products in the United States (New York Times Chinese website) Apple (Apple) CEO Timothy D. Cook (Timot...

(The New York Times Chinese website)

Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook said in an interview with NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek that Apple will make computer products in the United States for the first time in years.

"Next year, we will put one of our current Mac production lines in the United States," Cook said in an interview on NBC's "Rockefeller Center with Brian Williams," which will air Thursday.

Apple, the world's most valuable company, moved product manufacturing to Asia in the 1990s. An icon of American technology success and innovation, the California-based company has faced criticism in recent years for outsourcing jobs abroad.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Cook said, "I don't think we have a responsibility to create a specific kind of jobs. But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs."

According to these interviews, Apple plans to spend $100 million (approximately 620 million yuan) on manufacturing in the United States in 2013, which accounts for a small part of Apple's overall factory investment and an even smaller proportion of its available cash.

In the interview, Cook said that Apple will cooperate with partner companies, and its manufacturing is not just the final combination of parts. He pointed out that components of the company's ubiquitous iPhone products, including "engines" and glass screens, are made in the United States.

In the past few years, sales of iPhone, iPod and iPad have significantly exceeded sales of Apple's Macintosh series of computers, which were the foundation of Apple's early business. iPhone sales alone accounted for 48% of the company's total revenue in its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended on September 30.

But just recently in October, Apple launched a new thinner iMac, which pioneered the technology of mounting the computer's own components on a flat-screen display.

In the interview, Cook did not say where in the United States the new manufacturing plant would be built. But he defended Apple's past performance in creating jobs in the United States.

Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek, "If you step back and look at Apple's role in creating jobs in the United States, we estimate that we have created more than 600,000 jobs now." These jobs include jobs provided by Apple's partners and suppliers.

An Apple spokesperson could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Foxconn Technology manufactures more than 40% of the world's electronic products and is one of Apple's major overseas production contractors. Taiwan-based Foxconn is the largest private employer in mainland China, with 1.2 million employees, and the working environment inside its factories has come under close scrutiny.

In March, Foxconn promised to significantly reduce working hours and increase employee wages. The statement came in response to a wide-ranging investigation by the Fair Labor Association, a watchdog group that uncovered widespread problems at Foxconn factories, including multiple instances of Foxconn violating Chinese laws and industry codes of conduct.

Apple recently joined the Fair Labor Association after it asked the group to investigate factories that make iPhones, iPads and other devices. Concern about working conditions at Apple's overseas factories continues to grow, sparking numerous protests and petitions, and some worker rights groups beginning to scrutinize Apple's suppliers.

Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products sold by Apple in 2011 were manufactured outside the United States. Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas. Another 700,000 people are employed designing, manufacturing and assembling iPads, iPhones and other Apple products, most of them outside the United States.

In a 2011 meeting with Silicon Valley executives, President Obama asked then-Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs how he could get Apple to produce iPhones in the United States. Jobs, who died later that year, told the president that those jobs were not coming back. ?/FONT>

Translation: Gu Jinglu