'Q:What does China's competitive edge look like in practice?'
'A: One example from The Times article: When Jobs decided just a month
before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic screen
with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers
when the glass screens arrived at midnight, and the workers were
assembling 10,000 iPhones a day within 96 hours.
'Another example: Apple had originally estimated that it would take nine
months to hire the 8,700 qualified industrial engineers needed to oversee
production of the iPhone; in China, it took 15 days. Anecdotes like that
leave you "feeling almost impressed by the no-holds-barred capabilities
of these manufacturing plants," says Edward Moyer at CNET News,
"impressed and queasy at the same time."'
