Vietnam

"I knew nothing about Jan Stenbeck’s extensive mobile phone business in the third world, a knowledge gap I shared with most Swedish journalists at the time. The financial journalists who should have had good chances to know about them, chose not to attach great emphasis to them - which only shows that when it came to Stenbeck, ordinary values did not apply. (Imagine if Ericsson or any company from the Wallenberg sphere had started and run mobile phone companies in twenty developing countries, including Vietnam and Cambodia, during the nineties. I believe we would have read many reports about it.)"

"His handling of the situation earned him some credibility in Cupertino. It was now easier to accept that a soft approach to the reseller issue wasn’t the problem. But as Apple’s business boomed in China, the yellow cows were just one challenge. More broadly, Ford worried that Apple was losing leverage with the Chinese government and failing to exert its own power. As early as 2010 he’d told Bob Mansfield, Apple’s head of hardware: “All you gotta do is open up a factory in Vietnam and you’re gonna get some nervous Chinese government officials.”"

"Today, Apple works with more than 1,500 suppliers in fifty countries. But all roads lead through China: 90 percent of all production occurs in the country, and its much-vaunted assembly operations in Vietnam and India are no less dependent on the China-centric supply chain."