In the fiscal year 2021, many Apple suppliers opened production sites closer to Coopertino – a pandemic and geopolitical situation that help shape the supply structure – reports that of the more than 180 Apple suppliers as of September 2021, 48 were in production in the U.S. – only 25 were in production the year before.
According to the publication, more than 30 sites were located in California, compared to 10 a year earlier. According to the Apple list of suppliers, during the 2021 fiscal year, the company's key partners, including Foxconn, TSMC and the camera sensor manufacturer Sony, added production capacity in the United States.
The list does not specify how much business is being done with each unit and what each of the many companies is doing. It also contains obvious errors. For example, Shanghai is classified as Japan. However, it gives an approximate picture of the changes that are taking place.
A comparison with the list published 16 months ago suggests that Apple is still highly dependent on East Asian countries, particularly China. Some 150 Apple suppliers are doing business in the sky, and Apple's business is also closely linked to South Korean and Japanese companies responsible for supplying all kinds of components.
And yet, it turns out that American sites are playing an increasingly important role for Apple, and according to suppliers, as long as suppliers in California are not doing as large a business as in China, they're talking about small production lines, test lines for new products and service operations.
In today ' s travel environment between California and China has been objectively problematic since the beginning of 2020; during the pandemic, Apple relied mainly on the skills of engineers in foreign countries and used new technologies such as videoconferencing to organize work to control the headquarters of events at work; however, suppliers ' representatives stress that in some cases it would be extremely useful to have a customer ' s representative near the production itself, especially when testing materials and components of new products.
In addition, for political reasons, it would be useful for Apple and her partners to demonstrate an increased role for the United States in production, with President Joe Biden actively promoting high-tech production in the United States, and in August he signed a law providing more than $50 billion for direct assistance in the construction of semiconductors throughout the country.
Apple's development of Apple's suppliers in California has become part of a larger shift in supply chains. In particular, Apple stimulates production outside China, with India and Vietnam as new partners. For example, the release of iPhone 14 began last week in India only three weeks after the release of the new smartphone. For the first time, the production of Apple smartphones outside China began so soon after the official release.