Tag: Apple

Posted on by Tim Worstall

Apple Isn’t Trying To Buy A Japanese Smartphone Factory

Despite what The Times says this isn’t true:

Apple looks to buy Japanese smartphone factory

Firstly, there aren’t any smartphone factories in Japan. They’re all in China. Secondly, if Apple was about to buy a smartphone factory in a high cost country like Japan then that would presage their ability to build smartphones in the US, wouldn’t it? And that just ain’t gonna happen.

So, what is happening?

Apple is considering the joint purchase of a Japanese smartphone screen factory for as much as $820 million.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Apple’s Credit Card Should Be Sexist

The artificial intelligence that runs Apple’s new credit card – in association with Goldman Sachs – is apparently sexist. Good, it should be.

For the point about AIs, ‘bots and all the rest is that they’re an attempt to describe the world around us. That’s the only way they’re useful or effective, that they illuminate something of the reality surrounding us.

For example, should – just to pick an example – Burmese children be stunted through malnutrition?…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

It’s True, The iPhone Increases The US Trade Deficit – But How?

It’s entirely true that the iPhone, Apple’s practice of building it in China, increases the US trade deficit. But how and by how much is something worth examining at a greater level of detail. The answer being that it’s very much less than you think:

How the iPhone widens the US trade deficit with China: The case of the iPhone X
Yuqing Xing 11 November 2019

In order to pursue ‘fair trade’, the Trump administration has imposed a punitive 25% tariff on $250 billion’s worth of Chinese goods.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Apple’s iPhone Explains Why Trump Is Wrong About Tariffs, Trade And China

As innumerable of us have explained over the years there’s nothing wrong with a trade deficit anyway. But when that deficit is being wrongly counted anyway it’s even more trivial. Apple’s iPhone is used here as an example of why that deficit with China just isn’t what people seem to think it is:

The guts of an Apple iPhone show exactly what Trump gets wrong about trade

Crack open an iPhone and you’ll begin to see why President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China doesn’t make sense.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Not Important If True – Big Tech Server Farms To Be 10% Of Global Emissions Soon Enough

We have a fairly fundamental inability to understand matters climate change in this complaint here. The argument is that the server farms of Big Tech are going to be contributing some 10% or so of all global climate change emissions soon enough. To which the correct response is, well, so what?

Because the point is not to have no climate change emissions, nor to have no climate change. Rather, we’re trying to have the maximal possibly utility of human beings over time.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Apple To Make iPhones In India – Won’t Make Much Difference To Be Honest

Apple and Foxconn are getting together to fulfill one of the dearest wishes of Modi’s government in India – they’re going to start manufacturing up to date iPhones in the country. That this announcement comes at the beginning of the vast voting exercise that is an Indian general election, well, why not time such announcements for their maximum value?

The thing is that the move isn’t going to make all that much difference. Sure, there will be some dodging of import tariffs but even then it’s not a certainty that Indian iPhone prices will fall:

India has become the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, while China stagnates and Apple loses share to local competitors such as Huawei Technologies Co.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

What A Cute Fraud – Scamming Apple To Replace Chinese iPhone Fakes

This isn’t perhaps the world’s most sophisticated fraud – we don’t ever hear about them because they’re good enough that they don’t get caught – but it is a cute one, scamming Apple into replacing entirely fake Chinese iPhones. The basic plan is that people in China send over to the US something knocked up in some shed in Shenzen – well, that’s how real iPhones are made after all – and these are then bled into Apple’s replacement system for faulty iPhones.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Apple’s Top Anti-Insider Trading Lawyer Charged With Insider Trading – Why Did He Bother?

The question here isn’t what did he do – that’s for the courts to decide – but why the hell did he bother to do what is charged he did? For the gains that are alleged were so minimal compared to what he got anyway as a result of his position that it’s ludicrous.

I refer to the idea that Apple’s top lawyer against insider trading himself indulged in insider trading. For that’s what’s is indeed being alleged:

US prosecutors have charged a former top Apple lawyer with insider trading.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

If Only Joe Stiglitz Knew Anything About The Economics Of Taxing Apple

Sure, Joe Stiglitz knows a great deal about the taxation of capital and of capital incomes. He’s one – his work here having been largely done with Tony Atkinson – who has aided substantially in defining both how and whether it should be done. However, that doesn’t translate into being knowledgeable about the taxation of corporations. Which is sad really, as that’s what he’s trying to do.

In the last few years, globalisation has come under renewed attack.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

To Think That China, The Land Of Bling, Turns Against Apple’s iPhone Veblen Goods

Apple’s iPhone shipments fell rather drastically in China this last quarter – not really what we’d expect from a place getting as rich as fast as China is. The nouveaux riche are never really known for the delicacy and refinement with which they proclaim that change in economic status so it’s a bit of a surprise to see Veblen Goods like the iPhone being so rejected. But then that’s also the problem with such positioning in the marketplace.…

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