Electronics / software shifting to Asia?

[s5s]

I've been reading (and a few people mentioned it as well) that electronics, software etc is moving to Asia. By moving I mean that you can hire a company there to do the job for you for less money because salaries there are lower. The reason I can think of is that electronics / software doesn't need to be on-site and doesn't need expensive equipment and laboratories such as a wind tunnel etc. Is that true?

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

No this is not correct. Electronics manufacturing equipment can be very expensive, especially building chips. Electronics assembly moves to Asia where manual soldering is cheaper. Why chip design moved there is beyond me.

Programming is a different matter. You can indeed outsource your programming to India. It might be cheap, but the quality is usually bad. The quality is increasing but so are their salaries. With countries like china you also have to worry if they will keep your code to themselves or if they sell it to your competitors. So there is still room for software development in the USA and the EU.

 

[mgb_phys]

This recently came up in connection with the new Apple iPad, it's made in china and so some politician was making the case that $zillions of US money was going to china and we should DO_SOMETHING (tm)

An iPod (the old gadget) originally cost $154 to make, but a breakdown of the cost of parts/assembly/software in an iPod showed that only $4 of value ended up in china. Most of the cost was expensive micro chips bought from Japan and the US, software licenses to the US and Europe and shipping - very little of the money ended up in the cheap asian country that was unfairly undercutting everyone.

Tracing where the money actually goes is very complicated.