Apple Squeeze: Invaluable Experience Over Margin

“So in 2016, when iPhone margins were 33 percent, Chinese rivals Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi were earning 7 percent, 6 percent, and 2 percent margins, respectively. In other words, the Apple Squeeze was instrumental to how Apple attained industry-leading margins. The message was: *We won’t pay you much, but the experience will be invaluable*.”

“. But Gou grasped earlier than anyone that the value of working with Apple wasn’t the profits, it was the *learning.* Foxconn might not win much profit from Apple—it might even lose money at times—but the work itself, as well as the lessons Cupertino offered by having its engineers work side by side with locals in the factories, gave his team a deep education. Foxconn’s goal was to absorb these lessons and apply the skills to its other, more lucrative clients. “His people used to hate us, because they used to make no money out of us,” says an Apple operations executive.”