I needed a break from all of the talk of stock manipulation, and this did the trick. For me anyway.
Worth a short read, awfully impressive. Lots of interesting quotes but this stuck out most to me:
"Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside tells us that having the factory in the US was crucial for the MotoMaker customization program to even exist, but it also offers other benefits to the company from an engineering standpoint. Since Motorola's devices are designed in the US, having the manufacturing close by lets engineers make quick changes and tweaks to the design and look of the device much faster than if it were located overseas.
"There is a premium [with building in the US] but it's not material to the economics of the business. It's a myth that you can't bring manufacturing here because it's too expensive," says Woodside. "We've observed that wages in Asia are going up, wages here are relatively steady, consumers care more about where their products are being built, and you have advantages of having design close to your manufacture. Those advantages will well outweigh the costs that we have today and those costs will go down over time."
For Motorola, final device assembly in the US is just a start. The next step the company hopes to accomplish is to move the fabrication of the external components — the back casing, the bezels surrounding the display and the camera, and the volume and power buttons, etc. — to the US. It also expects other companies in the consumer electronics industry to follow suit. "If you look at the automotive industry or home appliances, manufacturing is coming back to the US, and there's good reasons for it," says Woodside."
