Apple's OEM FoxConn Launching Its Own Retail Stores

This was bound to happen.  It’s China’s turn.  In a sense, this is how Japan has become a high-tech powerhouse.  So has Korea.

I pointed out in prior post that the case of Apple has been more than its competitiveness in product design and features or software.  It is not just Apple.  One has to see why MNCs (Some Korean chaebols have become MNCs) have outsourced and offshored their manufacturing operations overseas to begin with.

It boils down to social responsibility and moral choice, as discussed.  I have stressed that productive capacity is the wealth of a nation.  Policy makers and big business have to give social considerations when making outsourcing and offshoring decisions.  The global production cycle comes full circle.  Protection of manufacturing jobs and wellbeing of a nation go hand in hand.

From Zero Hedge:

Two weeks ago, when summarizing the state of the US vs China escalating patent war (for now manifesting itself in the courtroom brawl between Apple and Samsung, but soon to drag many more comparable companies down in drawn out litigation), we observed that while AAPL may have the upper hand, iPhone 5 map fiasco notwithstanding, that "the Chinese politburo can one day decide to pull FoxConn's operational license, in the process bankrupting AAPL overnight" if China really wanted to turn the tables. Obviously, this was the "thought experimental" MAD outcome which leads to loses for everyone involved: both Apple and China (where Apple's contract manufacturer FoxConn employs over 1 million workers). There is one other alternative: that FoxConn, by now having reverse engineered the peak of Apple's brilliance (whose latest evolutionary step was "lighter" and "longer", which anyone could have come up with), decides to brave it alone, and instead of being a contract manufacturer, to simply slap on a FoxConn sticker, a la Acer and ASUS, and sell all Apple-equivalent products at 50% off while collecting all the revenue. Impossible, you say, Apple would never allow it? It is already happening, first in high-growth Brazil, where FoxConn is now launching its own stores.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-22/apples-oem-foxconn-launching-its-own-retail-stores