As we are constantly reminded here, Apple takes 80% of the phone industry profits and thus deserve proportionate blame for working conditions.
They make $575 in profit from an iPhone but pay the Foxconn workers $7 to assemble it. They could double the pay and still make a very huge profit. On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software and media purchases.
Meanwhile, the other companies are not doing very well, and labor cost increases for them might put them out of business entirely and then the workers won't even have a job. HTC doesn't have $100 billion in the bank and recently reported a bad quarter. This is why Apple is criticized more since it has most leeway of all the companies mentioned in the article to increase wages.
They make $575 in profit from an iPhone but pay the Foxconn workers $7 to assemble it. They could double the pay and still make a very huge profit. On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software and media purchases.
Meanwhile, the other companies are not doing very well, and labor cost increases for them might put them out of business entirely and then the workers won't even have a job. HTC doesn't have $100 billion in the bank and recently reported a bad quarter. This is why Apple is criticized more since it has most leeway of all the companies mentioned in the article to increase wages.