For the first time in years, Apple will manufacture computers in the United States, the chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook, said in interviews with NBC and Bloomberg Businessweek.þþ“Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States,” he said in an interview to be broadcast Thursday on “Rock Center” on NBC.þþApple, the biggest company in the world by market value, moved its manufacturing to Asia in the late 1990s. As an icon of American technology success and innovation, the California-based company has been criticized in recent years for outsourcing jobs abroad.þþ“I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job,” Mr. Cook said in the Bloomberg interview. “But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.”þþThe company plans to spend $100 million on the American manufacturing in 2013, according to the interviews, a small fraction of its overall factory investments and an even tinier portion of its available cash.þþIn the interviews, Mr. Cook said the company would work with partners and that the manufacturing would be more than just the final assembly of parts. He noted that parts of the company’s ubiquitous iPhone, including the “engine” and the glass screen, were already made in America.þþOver the last few years, sales of the iPhone, iPod and iPad have overwhelmed Apple’s line of Macinotsh computers, the basis of the company’s early business. Revenue from the iPhone alone made up 48 percent of the company’s total revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30.þþBut as recently as October, Apple introduced a new, thinner iMac computer, which pioneered the technique of building the computer innards into the flat screen.
Source: NY Times
