Globalization and Apple's respond to the international Game

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,5, Leeds Metropolitan University, language: English, abstract: Globalization is a defining word of our age and the way in which we live. It affects people, companies, their workforce and consumers. Globalization affects all aspects, not just of the corporate world, but transactional and cultural relationships generally. And as a consequence it affects how we live and how we interact, no matter where we live. This is background wherefore it has a great impact on our life and how we interact, no matter where we live. The study of transaction takes place in form of trade across national borders for the purpose of satisfying the needs of individuals and organizations.

According to Milton Friedman, "it's now possible to produce a product anywhere by a business located anywhere, using resources from anywhere, to be sold anywhere".
(Roosa, 2008, p.182)


All Apple products, as well as the Ipod, are developed, designed and market in house by Apple's headquarter located in Cupertino USA, but simultaneously outsourced the remaining four hundred plus intermediate components to both domestic and international subcontractors.

The story of internationalization starts with the microchip that makes the "music player go". It is subcontracted by another Silicon Valley company called Portalplayer which outsourced the microchip's production to Taiwan. Even the operating Software is written by engineers in India which are cheaper than their American Colleagues. Together with the Ipods fabulous operating system which makes the product easy to use, the microchip is send to a warehouse located in Hong Kong until the component is delivered to Apple's outsourced production plant (Linden et al, 2007). A few of the Ipod components are high cost. The hard drive & flashmemory (function as temporary storage) are manufactured by Toshiba in Japan and Samsung in Korea. The majority of components are low cost. For instance the metal parts are made by Foxconn in Taiwan and the plastic components are produced in Singapore which developed from a low cost manufacturing platform to a higher-value added manufacturing centre (Brown, 1998, p.198). All components are assembled in the outsourced production plant in Shanghai. The transportation company Fed Ex delivers the finished Ipod to the worldwide 246 Apple stores and other electronic stores (Kahney, 2008, p.86).