Whether in line with the national average or not, the recent slate of suicides at Foxconn has been a public relations nightmare not just for the Chinese electronics manufacturer, but for their partners as well.
Now, a report from Chinese site Zol.com.cn suggests that Cupertino might be taking the well-being of their subcontracted workers into their own hands: they claim that Apple will subsidize the wages of Foxconn employees working on their products with a profit-sharing scheme.
According to the article, Apple believes the main reason for the suicide jumps is low wages, and so they are prepared to offer roughly 1 to 2% of the profits of Foxconn-produced Apple products to the employees who have worked on them.
Uh oh. The Department of Justice just keeps on moving their anti-trust magnifying glass farther and farther away from Apple’s competition with Amazon, blowing up the pores on the whole iTunes apple skin. The DoJ is now reaching out to Hollywood as they investigate their anti-trust case against Cupertino.
“The [Justice Dept.] is doing outreach,” said one Hollywood industry source. “You can’t dictate terms to the industry. The Adobe thing is just inviting the wrath of everybody.”
Added a senior source at a media company: “If Apple thinks it’s going to increase its monopoly with the iPad, it should look at the history of other walled gardens.”
While the DoJ is just “investigating” right now, an anti-trust case — scurrilous or not — is pretty much inevitable at this point: Apple is now the biggest tech company in the world, and since so many big, powerful companies are now smaller than them, they’re going to lobby to knock Apple down a few notches in whatever way they can.
The grieving family of a Foxconn worker who jumped to his death in January protest outside the factory.
The rash of suicides at Foxconn are not due to harsh working conditions but the plight of China’s migrant workforce, says an open letter signed by a dozen Chinese sociologists.
The letter blames the string of Foxconn suicides on the social problems faced by China’s vast class of migrant workers.
Originating from poor rural areas, Chinese migrant workers are often rootless and isolated, cut off from friends and family. Instead of finding good jobs in urban factories, they are often too poorly paid to settle in their new cities, and have limited access to education and healthcare. With no prospects at home, they are stuck. The sociologists call it the “path of no return.”
We have made them live a migrancy life that is rootless and helpless, where families are separated, parents have no one to support them, and children are not taken care of. In short, this is a life without dignity.
The sociologists note that at the end of 2008, the population of Shenzhen exceeded 12 million, but only 2.28 million were registered as permanent residents. The giant Foxconn plant, which employs upwards of 600,000 workers, is located in Shenzhen.
The sociologists call on Foxconn and the Chinese central government to boost wages, and improve access to housing, eduction and healthcare. They also say demand workers be given a “voice,” which presumably means unions.
We call on every enterprise, to make a conscientious effort to increase migrant workers‘ pay and rights, and allow migrant workers to become true “citizens of the enterprise”.
Working together with our colleagues in the PRC’s propaganda ministry we have developed a great new counter-narrative that we’ve been pushing pretty hard in background conversations with friendly hacks. Basically it’s the notion that Foxconn’s suicide rate is actually below the national average of China, meaning that if you’re working at Foxconn you’re actually less likely to commit suicide. That’s right. The truth is, we are actually saving lives in China.
Fake Steve continues:
But, see, arguments about national averages are a smokescreen. Sure, people kill themselves all the time. But the Foxconn people all work for the same company, in the same place, and they’re all doing it in the same way, and that way happens to be a gruesome, public way that makes a spectacle of their death. They’re not pill-takers or wrist-slitters or hangers. They’re not Sylvia Plath wannabes, sealing off the kitchen and quietly sticking their head in the oven. They’re jumpers. And jumpers, my friends, are a different breed. Ask any cop or shrink who deals with this stuff. Jumpers want to make a statement. Jumpers are trying to tell you something.
Although still lower than the national average, Apple’s manufacturing partner Foxconn’s worker suicide problem is becoming such a public relations nightmare, so it’s understandable that their announced plan to raise wages for about 420,000 factory workers is being seen by many as a way to mitigate worker deaths.
The pay raise is substantial: each worker will currenly earning $131 a month will get a 20% pay hike. On Foxconn’s part, they claim the pay hike has been planned for some time… but it’s hard to believe the recent publicity about worker conditions hasn’t, at the very least, pushed this plan onto the fast track.
Employees seem hopeful. “[The pay hike] may help the suicide situation, because we workers just need money and the financial pressure on us is great,” one worker said.
Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 with a prototype tablet from Hewlett-Packard.
“It is a long game,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told reporters on Thursday in response to Apple overtaking his company on the stock market. “We have good competitors but we too are very good competitors.”
He added: “I will make more profit and certainly there is no technology company on the planet that is as profitable as we are.”
“Let’s see what happens as I am still pleased that 94 times out of a 100 somebody picks a Windows PC,” he said.
Microsoft shares closed at $25.01 on Wednesday, giving it a market cap of $219.18 billion. Apple closed at $244.05, a market value of $222.07 billion.
He certainly makes a compelling argument. Like other tech behemoths before it, Microsoft’s products are simply being rendered irrelevant by new technologies, new ideas, and new products that have come out of the blue and swept them aside.
Workers install suicide netting at a Foxconn plant. Image: NYT.
The Asian electronics giant Foxconn is in full damage control mode after yet another suicide at one its giant Chinese factories, which cheaply pump out electronics for Apple and others. But one of the company’s representatives made an unfortunate statement when talking about the conditions at its factories:
“There is a fine line between productivity and regimentation and inhumane treatment,” said Louis Woo, an aide to Mr. Gou at Hon Hai. “I hope we treat our workers with dignity and respect.”
But of course, that’s not true at all. There’s a huge difference between productivity and inhumane treatment, not a “fine line.” And it’s that gap that makes all the difference.
Foxconn has a reputation for a stressful and oppressive work atmosphere. Employees are paid relatively well, but are pushed hard to produce and are not allowed to talk to each other during work, according to reports. The work is repetitive, mind-numbing and robotic. Stress, isolation and hopelessness: it’s a recipe for trouble.
Apple and the other tech companies that are Foxconn’s customers must bear some responsibility here. It’s time Apple stepped up its annual audit of contractors and lived up to its promise of “ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility.”
In one of the biggest and unlikeliest turnarounds in business history, Apple is the most valuable company in technology, passing Microsoft in market capitalization.
Apple’s market cap has passed $227.1 billion — ahead of Microsoft’s $226.3 billion. Apple is up about 1.8% today, and Microsoft down about 1%.
Of course, this may change tomorrow, but for the moment, Apple is the new king of technology.
What a difference a decade makes, when Apple was on the ropes and Microsoft look unassailable. Now, Apple is clearly at the forefront of the next huge wave in tech: mobile. Microsoft isn’t even in the game.
There are twice as many iPhone OS devices in use as Andorid devices, the mobile advertising company AdMob estimates.
AdMob’s April Mobile Metrics report analyzed the number of unique Android and iPhone devices in its network. The company found that in the US, there were 10.7 million iPhone devices and 8.7 million Android devices. Include the iPod touch, and there are 2 to 1 iPhone OS devices compared to Android. Overseas, the gap is even wider: 3.5 to 1 iPhone devices compared to Android.
The numbers are illustrative because both platforms are growing fast, but there little idea how many are in day-to-day use. For example, Apple has sold 85 million iPhones and iPod touches in the last three years, but doesn’t say how many are in use. At its recent developer conference, Google boasted that it is activating 100,000 Android devices a day. Gartner estimates that Apple’s OS now powers 15.4 percent of global smartphones, while Google’s Android has 9.6 percent of the market.
AdMob says its numbers are good beceause they are based on actual data, not estimates, and it has a large sample size.
Apple’s slice of the web browsing pie sits restlessly at around ten percent, in the States when you take all of its platforms into account and is growing every day. It doesn’t quite have the same breadth of pie wedge in Europe, but as this chart from AT Internet auditing the visitors of their monitored websites makes clear, Apple’s operating systems are gobbling up more and more pageviews every day.
According to AT Internet, Apple’s marketshare is now sitting at around 6.8% in Europe, having grown 2.3 points since last November. iPhone OS is consuming about 1% of all European website views. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s own marketshare has gone down over the same period… with websites visited by Windows Mobile and Android devices are so insignificant that they can be comfortably lumped into “Other OS” category.
Former Apple retail employees have filed a class action suit in California over rest breaks and poor treatment.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all people employed in non-exempt (hourly paid) “Genius” positions in San Francisco County Superior Court on September 15, 2009. A website gives more details on the suit.
“Apple has enjoyed an advantage over its competition and imposes a resultant disadvantage on its “Genius” employees by failing to authorize, permit and provide statutorily mandated rest breaks as required by law.”
Microsoft's James J Allard (seen here with Bill Gates) is leaving the company, largely because of failed attempts to match Apple's iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Two of Microsoft’s highest-profile executives are leaving, and Apple’s running rings around the company is partly seen as the reason.
Robbie Bach and James J Allard, leaders of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are both leaving and will not be replaced. It is Microsoft’s biggest management shakeup in years. The restructuring will put CEO Steve Ballmer in direct charge of Microsoft’s consumer-focused mobile businesses, which are getting a kicking from Google, Nintendo and especially Apple. This transition is reminiscent ofwhen Bill Gates left Microsoft, which signified a turning point for the company’s leadership and direction.
In fact, Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, who wrote a pair of books about the Entertainment & Devices Division (Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked), says the inability to compete with Apple is behind the shakeup:
Allard’s last project at Microsoft was Courier, which Ballmer canceled earlier this year. It was viewed as an attempt to take on the Apple iPad. While Bach’s division is profitable now, it may be remembered for its inability to take on Apple in the increasingly critical mobile business. And that may explain why, any day now, Apple’s market capitalization is going to become bigger than Microsoft’s.
UPDATE: Horace Dediu has a good guess why Bach was fired: he lost Hewlett Packard when the company bought Palm. “Bach lost a key account; in fact, he could be responsible for having lost the biggest account that Microsoft ever had. Ballmer is a sales guy and he knows the importance of these relationships. A customer like HP must be managed carefully and their strategy must be steered to fit with yours. If HP felt they needed to go somewhere else for their mobile OS, it’s a slap in the face, but if they buy the asset and IP and internalize a competing platform, then that is a dagger to the heart for Ballmer.”
With every new Apple product comes a new advertising campaign, so it’s no surprise that Cupertino’s already casting for a new campaign centered on the next iPhone. Now Engadget has confirmed it with their sources.
According to Engadget, the next iPhone commercial will be directed by American Beauty director (and mawkish paper bag enthusiast) Sam Mendes will be helming the commercials for the next iPhone, which is being referred to as Mammoth / N90 internally… presumably to keep the actual name of the next iPhone (the only aspect of the device not yet revealed by leaks) underwraps until WWDC.
The spots will apparently heavily promote the next iPhone’s videoconferencing abilities, and one will featureg a mother and daughter having a video iChat call with one another.
Engadget also spotted some Twitter status updates from young actors bragging about their forthcoming auditions…. although I’m guessing after their indiscretion has been picked up by the newsfeeds, their chances of actually landing the roles are pretty slim.
Forget the escalating Apple – Google rivalry for a moment, the latest chapter in the war against Apple unfolds in New York: Yankee Stadium has banned iPads. Apparently their existing security restrictions prohibiting laptop computers extend to the new Handheld Wonder, leaving multitasking attendees all atwitter.
Good opportunity here for my hometown team (and legendary Yankee rival) Boston Red Sox to encourage iPads at Fenway Park, and create a custom app for enhancing the game day experience. With the Express Written Permission of Major League Baseball, of course…
What would you want to have on your iPad while watching the game?
Having long hated Apple’s Get a Mac campaign, I was surprised to find myself getting sentimental as I watched this three-minute tribute to the whole Mac vs. PC saga, as put together by OneMoreThing. Minimize Justin Long’s lugubrious smarm and what you’re left with is the core strength of the campaign anyway: John Hodgman’s consistently winsome and hysterical performance as the PC. That core strength, though, always seemed directly opposed to the message: PCs suck. It’s just so hard to hate PCs when their avatar is this awesome. Either way, it’s nice to see Hodgman get one last hurrah: this is a man who earned his paycheck for the last five years. Hurrah!
It looks like the final curtain has closed on Apple’s award-winning “Get a Mac” campaign launched in 2006.
Apple has pulled the ads from the company site, the page now redirects visitors to “Why You’ll Love a Mac.” (Nostalgics can still find them on YouTube, though.)
The last ones, released in October 2009, were surprisingly clever but Mac man Justin Long speculated in an interview last month that the ads had run their course:
What’s the status on those Apple commercials?
JL: You know, I think they might be done. In fact, I heard from John, I think they’re going to move on. I can’t say definitively, which is sad, because not only am I going to miss doing them, but also working with John. I’ve become very close with him, and he’s one of my dearest, greatest friends. It was so much fun to go do that job, because there’s not a lot to it for me. A lot of it is just keeping myself entertained between takes, and there’s no one I’d rather do it with than John.
Are you sad or glad to see them go? Which one was your favorite?
Think you already know all the new iPhone 4G will do? A tip-o-the-hat to Cult of Mac reader Mario Baluci, who wrote to tell us about this short rendering of the upcoming iPhone (or what it may look like) that he created as a promo for his Make Coffee iPhone app. Silly, but the video is nicely done.
Perhaps rev2 will control one of the webcam coffee machines still dripping away on the internet…
Over at 9to5Mac, Jordan Golson put together this simple but illuminating pie chart illustrating Apple’s revenue breakdown by category for Q2 2010.
It really just makes everything immediately clear about Apple’s business, does’t it? The Mac and OS X are also-rans now: Apple’s present and future is the iPhone OS, which accounts for almost as much revenue as Apple’s Mac and iPod units combined. Cupertino’s moving to a mobile future, not one defined by thirty-year old, desktop-oriented expectations.
I can’t wait to see Q3’s numbers. My guess is it’s going to contradict what Apple has been saying in its advertisements all along: the iPad isn’t the future of computing. It’s the present.
RetroMacCast listener newtonpoetry imagines what Apple’s website might have been circa 1983 and circa 1993. Love that beige menubar and those blazing system speeds!
RetroMacCast is a (mostly) weekly podcast about Apple’s Olde Beige Stuffe (and newer shiny items), always some topics of interest for classic Mac geeks.
I am all for the Federal government funding and deploying a robust and relentless antitrust division. I don’t wish to go into detail or name examples here and now, but I believe the emasculation of antitrust and restraint of trade investigation and prosecution over the past 30 years has meant a great disservice to the public and to the economy. If that arm of the Justice Department gets revived under Obama it will be a good thing for the country and for the world.
With respect to antitrust claims against Apple related to either the iPhone Developer’s Agreement or the iAds program I don’t think Apple has a thing to worry about.
Apple has settled claims with state regulators who allege the company mishandled electronic waste. Photo: Thomas Dohmke
Federal antritrust regulators are taking a keen interest in changes Apple made to its iPhone developers agreement, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting.
Steve Jobs is at it again — emailing Apple customers with answers to their questions.
This one was sent to CultofMac.com by reader Paul Greenberg, who asked Jobs about a missing MobileMe feature that’s been bugging him for three years: the inability to sync notes via MobileMe.
Reversing their long-embraced policy of buying other companies rarely, Apple’s been on a shopping spree the past six months with the acquisition of Quattro Wireless, Lala, Intrinsity and Siri. What’s behind it?
Bloomberg has an interesting overview of Apple’s evolving acquisition strategy. What it comes down to, at the end of the day? Staying ahead of Google in the mobile space.
According to analyst Brian Marshall, Apple “learned a good lesson with AdMob.” Apple let the acquisition process linger too long, allowing Google to outbid them. Instead, they had to settle for “second-fiddle Quattro.”
I just noticed something about surfing the web on an iPad. Here’s a hint: look at the red circle in the New York Times screenshot above.
It was hard to spot because it’s actually noticing something that’s not there: the blue Legos where the Flash plugin should be.
In January, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he wasn’t able to load the NYT‘s front-page videos (remember the Lego bricks visible during his debut event?) The absence of Flash seemed like a major problem. Video, games, rich-media — none of these would work, pundits said, and the iPad would be a crippled device.
But that hasn’t proven to be the case. Not at all. During the past month I’ve been using the iPad, I’ve rarely encountered problems with the lack of Flash. All the sites I visit regularly – the BBC, NYT and Wall Street Journal — all of them have quickly made video and rich-media available in iPad-friendly formats.
YouTube is especially iPad-friendly. I’ve yet to encounter a YouTube video the iPad wouldn’t play. And because so many sites use YouTube to embed video, it seems like a lot of the web is iPad-friendly.
The only problems is streaming music from MixRiot (which I use a lot but isn’t exactly mainstream) and playing Farmville and thousands of other Flash games. But given how much time I waste fertilizing my kids’ crops and sending them gifts, that’s actually a blessing.
And it’s only going to get worse for Flash. Look at the chart below from Encoding.com, which does a lot of video encoding for sites like MTV and MySpace. In the last four quarters, Flash video (represented by FLV and Flash VP6) dropped from 69 percent to only 26 percent of all videos. Meanwhile, the H.264 format went from 31 percent to 66 percent, and is now the most popular format by a long shot.
