Apple in China Quotes

“Steve Jobs had once said of hiring people: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“iPhone accounts for less than a fifth of global smartphone shipments but garners 80 percent of industry profits.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Fighting for excellence is about resisting the gravitational pull of mediocrity. It involves being dead tired and still pushing yourself, and others, to get it right, every time.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Quite simply, you don’t get to do business in China today without doing exactly what the Chinese government wants you to do. Period. No one is immune. No one.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“The whole charade was less about industrial strategy than political theater, a fact underscored by the words “Made in USA” etched into the glass plaque of Cook’s gift. Apple’s iPhone wouldn’t be made in America; just the plaque.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“No wonder the most liked comment on a YouTube unboxing video of the Mate XT is, “Now you know why USA banned Huawei.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Back then Apple was rebellious. It was innovative. It actively positioned Macintosh as the destroyer of lockstep ideology. That spirit was lost the first time Steve Jobs departed Apple, in 1985. When he returned twelve years later, his first major action wasn’t a product; it was an advertisement.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Many officials believed that trade would empower China’s middle class and perhaps topple the Communist leadership; instead, foreign investment strengthened the Communist Party.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Many officials believed that trade would empower China’s middle class and perhaps topple the Communist leadership; instead”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“One of the narrative arcs of this book is how Apple”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Even if things go smoothly”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Jenny Chan”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“The assessment was sobering: Chinese brands had accounted for just 23 percent of global smartphone shipments in 2013”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“But one week later”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“But that’s precisely what Trump wanted. “Tim”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“When Beijing asked for The New York Times to be removed”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“In China”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“The flexibility of Chinese labor was a key ingredient in the secret sauce that allowed Apple to function so efficiently. China didn’t have plentiful labor just because it was a large country; the state orchestrated second-class migrants into a “floating population” of more than 220 million adult workers—a larger workforce than that of the entire United States. State-backed organizations commissioned companies to drive buses into rural areas to hire unskilled workers—so-called dispatch labor—and move them to Apple’s vast network of suppliers for seasonal production. Internal documents obtained for this book detail how Apple’s need for Chinese labor would fall below 900,000 in the slow months of spring”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Churn was especially high around Chinese New Year”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Years later”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“But these forecasts were shortsighted and had ignored the wider societal interests of the West. If electronics assembly was now primarily based on low-wage labor and scale”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Quitting time at IBM’s offices in Raleigh”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“It would be banal to say that Apple wouldn’t be Apple today without China. There is no other place on earth that could have provided similar cost”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“But this is where Guthrie’s argument”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“If something was too easy, ID would push the envelope even further. In the making of the Mac Mini desktop around 2004, one engineer recalls Ive asking if he could make the computer such and such a size. The engineer said he could. Ive narrowed the dimensions and asked if he could build that. The engineer said he could. So Ive minimized the dimensions again. This time the engineer said, “No, no, that would be really difficult.” And Ive said, “Great, those are the dimensions.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Besides Luxshare, the other three major indigenous contract manufactures making Apple products are BYD Electronic, a major supplier of hardware enclosures and assembler of iPads; Goertek, a maker of AirPods and AirPods Pro; and Wingtech, which manufacturers Mac Mini desktops and MacBooks. These groups collectively reported $6 billion of total revenue in 2015; by 2020 their revenues had quadrupled to $25 billion, and in 2025 their sales are expected to exceed $52 billion. Apple has been instrumental to their success, shifting orders from Taiwanese leaders Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron, and Quanta. As David Collins, an Asia-based manufacturing consultant, said of the Red Supply Chain in late 2020: “Foxconn’s share price is down roughly 50% from two years ago. They see blood in the water.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“The technology transfer that Apple facilitated made it the biggest corporate supporter of Made in China 2025, Beijing’s ambitious, anti-Western plan to sever its reliance on foreign technology.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“The iPhone accounts for fewer than 20 percent of smartphones sold around the world, yet it routinely boasts more than 80 percent of industry profits.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

“Only a dozen multinationals earn more than $10 billion a year in China, and Apple tops the list with around $70 billion.”
― Patrick McGee, Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company