Apple iPad Best Price | Buy Apple iPad

Posts Tagged ‘computing’

Designer behind iPhone, iPod, iMac and iPad flies from US with family to be knighted by Princess Anne

The Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive has spoken of the “thrilling” moment when he was knighted by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace.

The 45-year-old, who is senior vice-president of industrial design at Apple, flew to Britain from the US with his wife and eight-year-old twin sons to receive the honour.

“It has been wonderful. It was really thrilling and particularly humbling,” he said after being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for services to design and enterprise.

Ive, who was born in Chingford, north-east London, is credited withdesigning some of the best-loved gadgets of the modern age, including the iPhone, iPod, iMac and iPad.

He said he and Princess Anne had talked about how often he comes to the UK and about her iPad.

Asked about the impact of his products on the modern world, Ive said: “We don’t really spend much time thinking about our impact.

We are fully consumed with trying to make the very best products that we can.”

Also being knighted was Sir Peter Bazalgette, 59, the TV programme-maker behind hit series including Big Brother, Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force.

He said he was particularly pleased to be receiving a knighthood as he is the great-great-grandson of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the civil engineer who was knighted in the 19th century for his work designing and overseeing the building of an enclosed sewer network for London.

Bazalgette said his knighthood was a “huge honour”.

Ban of ’4G’ label is due to lack of mobile services compatible with the device in UK, Advertising Standards Authority says

Apple has been forced by the Advertising Standards Authority to withdraw claims in the UK that its new iPad has “4G capability” to join high-speed mobile broadband services – because there will be no services compatible with the device here.

The UK joins Australia in banning the use of the “4G” label to advertise the new iPad, launched in January. The circuitry inside the device can connect to 4G services in the US, which is Apple’s largest market, but because those operate on different frequencies from those used in the UK and Europe, the “4G” iPads presently on sale will never be able to connect to 4G networks here.

However, on Wednesday the device was still advertised on Apple’s website as “Wi-Fi + 4G”, although it notes in small print at the bottom of the page that 4G is only available on particular mobile networks in the US. It says that the device “lets you connect to fast dat networks around the world” – but with a reference to a note pointing out only that “data plans [are] sold separately. See your carrier for details.” The specifications on the UK store say that it works with 4G LTE on 700MHz and 2100MHz frequencies – while noting in small print that “4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the US, and on Bell, Rogers and Telus networks in Canada”.

Apple UK declined to comment on the ruling.

The ASA said that it had had more than 40 complaints about the “4G” claims, which appeared on Apple’s UK website where the tablet was described as offering “Wi-Fi + 4G” capability. In the UK, 4G networks are expected to use the 800MHz and 2600MHz frequencies.

One of the people who complained to the ASA, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the Guardian that he works in telecoms supporting mobile data devices: “I raised the complaint because customers were calling in believing it would work on 4G when 4G was launched in the UK. My complaint was specifically that they should call it 4G when it would never work as such in the EU and UK.”

4G services are expected to start coming on stream in the UK towards the end of this year – though there are concerns that the services could interfere with TV services on adjacent frequencies.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC said Apple had “misled” consumers by claiming that it could connect to 4G networks there. It is not compatible because of the frequency difference: the Telstra network there uses the 1800MHz frequency. The 700MHz band is used there for TV frequencies, though it may come free later this year through a government auction.

In Australia, the company is to email all customers who bought the new iPad offering them a refund. The ACCC took legal action to ensure that Apple did not mislead potential buyers by suggesting that the device could join 4G networks there.

The ASA’s decision is one of a growing list in which it has found against Apple. In 2008 it upheld a complaint after a TV advert said “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone” – but two viewers complained that it did not support Flash or Java, which were integral to a number of web pages. Another, in November 2008, upheld a complaint that a TV ad which shortened sequences for accessing web pages exaggerated its speed.

In the US, the new iPad can connect to 4G services capable of data speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) provided by AT&T and Verizon, the two biggest networks, but because they use different frequencies for their connectivity, buyers must pick the correct one for the carrier they need.

Those networks use different frequencies to carry the data than will be used in the UK, meaning that the current generation of iPads with “4G” capability will not be able to connect to UK 4G networks. They will still connect to existing 3G networks at 3G speeds.

Intel machines running Windows 8 will have advantages over the ARM versions. Which means no post-PC world for Microsoft

So now we know, there will be four editions of Windows 8, all arriving (probably) by the end of this year. There are just two surprises: a small one and a larger one.

The small surprise is that the main versions of Windows will come in just 2.5 varieties: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows 8 Enterprise. (Enterprise is Pro with a few extra management bits.)

The second, larger surprise is that Microsoft’s iPad competitor, the bet-the-farm, nothing-more-important-than-this, post-PC tablet proposition is called – wait for it – Windows RT.

Huh? What’s so wrong with Windows Metro? What was so wrong with WOA (Windows on ARM)? And how’s that going to work in their marketing: “I’m a post-PC device and Windows RT was my idea?”

Anyway, that’s not important. What is important is that Intel may have just ruined the whole deal.

iPad-clone

The vision of what was, until this week, called Windows on ARM, or WOA was to produce something that looks and felt like an iPad, but with two distinguishing differences. It would come with Office – the only post-PC device to have it, and availability of Office on iPad is looking increasingly unlikely these days.

It would also come with the Metro-shell, the widely-appreciated and respected user interface vision that Microsoft is imposing on itself internally and on partners.

Go back a year or two and it’s easy to understand what pushed Microsoft into building a version of Windows that would run on ARM. From the fact Windows RT exists, we can infer that on the one hand Apple’s success with the iPad scared them rigid, and in short order.

On the other hand, we can infer that they had no faith in Intel being able to make x86 deliver ARM-like power efficiency. Their engineers must have thought – back in 2010 – that Intel-based tablets were always going to be hot, noisy, and a bit rubbish. If they were relaxed about the iPad and confident about Intel, they would have simply waited out Intel’s R&D and delivered an iPad-clone that ran on x86.

But here’s the law of unintended consequences in action – what Intel are actually doing is going gangbusters on trying to deliver that x86-based iPad-clone Microsoft didn’t think was going to happen. That really muddies the water.

It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to do that. Whilst Microsoft is terrified of a post-PC world ruled by Apple, Intel is terrified of a post-PC world ruled by ARM. If Intel were to make x86 work as well as ARM in scenarios where ARM currently rules, Intel’s shareholders are happy bunnies.

It was never clear to me how Microsoft was going to manage having two products called Windows that would behave very differently. The problem with WOA is that it doesn’t run legacy apps, so it’s entirely possible that our customer floating into PC World could buy a “Windows” machine that happened to be a tablet fully expecting it to run his copy of Microsoft Office 95, only to find himself unable to install it. But yet, had he bought this other machine labelled Windows it would have worked fine.

The new Intel tablets are SoC units based on Atom – essentially, they are next-generation netbook-class devices wrapped in a tablet chassis. But, hilariously, these are not Windows RT tablets. They are Windows 8 tablets. So on the counter in PC World you’re going to have one tablet labelled Windows 8 that will run all your legacy applications, and one labelled Windows RT that won’t.

And then?

According to Mary Jo Foley in her article above these new “Clover Trail” tablets will have a nine-hour battery life, weigh less than 700g and be under 9mm in thickness. For comparison, a “new iPad” is about 9mm in thickness, weighs 622g and has a nine-hour or 10-hour battery life. So they’re the same sort of deal.

There will be a slight price difference though. Apple doesn’t have to pay for an operating system license, whereas Microsoft’s OEM partners do. Windows 8 will go to OEMs at a higher price than Windows RT.

Although pricing information on Windows RT is privileged, it would be logical to expect this to be priced about the same as a Windows Phone OEM license. In December, I felt this to be around $15 for the Windows Phone license, $56 for the Windows license. That’s about a £25 difference.

Something about these Clover Trail devices then starts to make serious sense. A basic new iPad will run you £400. If you were to say to someone that for just £25 more you can run all Windows software on a device that behaves like an iPad? That’s a big sell.

A much smaller sell is saying to someone that for £400 you can have something like an iPad that’s not an iPad, but with less apps. And that’s also not an iPad – which I realise I just mentioned, but it’s a point so important it’s worth mentioning twice. Everyone in this space could really do with the iPad being ever-so much more important.

Oh, but one thing, Windows RT comes with Office (albeit without Outlook). Windows 8 doesn’t. So if you do spend £425 on a Windows 8 Clover Trail-class tablet, you’re going to need to shell out on Office, unless you’ve got a copy of Office 95 or better lying around, in which case you’re golden.

So what’s wrong with that?

Logically then, if their Clover Trail-class tablets work as advertised, Intel just killed off Windows RT tablets. Why would you not spend an extra 25 bones to run all your Windows apps?

What’s wrong with that is the Windows 8 and Clover Trail and x86 are all “PC” devices, and we’re in a post-PC world now. Microsoft’s intention was to create a post-PC device.

The fact you can run the legacy Windows desktop at all on Windows RT is an accident. Microsoft needed to run Office on it, so their engineers kept the legacy desktop support in there to de-risk the development of the Windows RT-optimised version of Office.

Why do you think you can’t run any other apps in legacy mode? The intention of neutering legacy mode in that way is designed to pin Windows RT in a post-PC world rather than have it get dragged back into a PC world. (No pun.)

In this article James Kendrick nails it by saying that the lure of the tablet is that there’s no intimidation. That’s why iPad sells so well. Post-PC devices are easy, straightforward, operable by anyone, and rarely go wrong.

PCs aren’t like that. And a Clover Trail-class Windows 8 tablet is a PC. Ergo, there will be intimidation, ergo people won’t buy them, ergo Apple will sell bazillions of iPads and, perhaps, the window of opportunity for Android will open again.

Case in point – a family friend recently bought an iPad and she asked me if she needed anti-virus for it. On an iPad, of course not. But on a full-on Windows machine, yes she would.

If these Clover Trail-class devices work as advertised they’ll steal all of Windows RT’s oxygen and kill it stone dead. And Windows will never move into a post-PC world. Something else will end up being the Pepsi to iPad’s Coke.

Apple’s iPad sales and PC trends point to a big future for tablets, but a new Forrester report sees promise for bigger machines

Now that the numbers are in, we can get a view on how the PC industry is doing – both the bit that Microsoft licenses directly (through Windows) and Apple’s slice.

Below is the graph for PC sales after you out take Apple’s slice. What is shows is that the high watermark for the industry – so far? – seems to have come in the Christmas quarter of 2010, when just over 89m Windows PCs were sold (averaging the figures from Gartner and IDC). In fact, that was the high watermark for the whole PC business so far, including Apple: just short of 92.9m personal computers were sold in that quarter.

But after that things fell off – leading me to wonder whether the PC industry had peaked. Analysts reckoned that it wasn’t necessarily because of the iPad (launched at the start of that year), but something was going on. From that piece at the time:

“While it’s tempting to blame the decline completely on the growth of media tablets, we believe other factors, including extended PC lifetimes and the lack of compelling new PC experiences, played equally significant roles,” said Bob O’Donnell, program vice-president at IDC. He had only expected a small rise in sales – of 1.5% – but was surprised by the fall.

The wisdom of analysts is now forecasting that the release of Windows 8, expected around October (with a sort-of “final-ish” release version in June), will lead to an uptick in sales for the year.

But when you compare those forecasts with those made earlier, it becomes clear that actually, forecasts for the PC market are being pared back. And there’s one reason why: tablets.

IDC, for example, makes regular forecasts for how the PC market will pan out; it also puts out tablet forecasts. I’ve combined and compared forecasts it made in June 2011, September 2011 and March 2012 where it predicts how emerging (essentially, the Far East and South America) and mature (essentially North America and Europe) markets will do in sales of desktops and laptops.

The decline of the desktop isn’t surprising – we’ve been seeing that for a long time. But what’s surprising is how the mature markets keep getting revised down (that’s the top of the light blue line, which shifts downwards in each revision) while tablet sales (the yellow chunk on top) gets bigger and bigger. Tablet forecasts aren’t available for some years and periods; I asked IDC to supply them, but it declined: only paying clients see those. Even so, you can see the direction of travel. Tablets are eating the PC’s lunch.

And it’s not only IDC which is saying this. Forrester on Tuesday put out a release forecasting that by 2016, a total of 375m tablets will be sold globally, and there will be 760m already in use. Compared to 2011, when Forrester reckons 56m tablets were sold, that’s an astonishing 46% compound growth. Frank Gillett, a Forrester analyst, says tablets “will become our primary computing device” because while they aren’t the most powerful computing gadgets, “they are the most convenient”. He points to longer battery life, always-on capability, handiness for carrying around, and ease of frequent use even if there isn’t a flat surface about.

So is that going to kill PCs? No, says Gillett (and you knew that answer already – in general new technologies don’t kill off old ones, they just slow them down). “Our casual estimate is that there will be 2 billion PCs in use by 2016, despite growing tablet sales. That’s because tablets only partially cannibalise PCs. Eventually tablets will slow laptop sales but increase sales of desktop PCs.” Why? “Because many people, especially information workers, will still need conventional PCs for any intensely creative work at a desk that requires a large display or significant processing power.”

One point that the report (which I’ve seen) makes is that “tablets will blossom in growth markets, particularly China” – which ought to be a worry for Microsoft’s traditional Windows licensing business on the PC, because China and the Far East has up until now been the promised land, despite the piracy. Forrester though reckons that emerging markets will take 40% of tablets by 2016, and that “Apple will do well in these markets due to strong product and brand appeal.” It also thinks that first-time buyers looking for a computing device will turn to a tablet, not a PC.

There’s some confirmation of that in what Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive said on Apple’s earnings call on Tuesday. He pointed to how quickly sales of the iPad have ramped up: “through the last quarter, I should say, which is just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we’ve sold 67 million. And to put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods and over three years for that many iPhones.”

In other words: tablets sell. Fast. People are adopting them really quickly.

The worrying things for Microsoft and (to a lesser extent) Google: Forrester reckons that “Apple will be the clear leader” – it shows it taking around 50% of the market, even in 2016 – and that “Google’s Android ecosystem will struggle in tablets and focus on low price markets.” Here’s the surprise in the latter: “The wide variety of devices, features, and software support, plus inconsistent support for OS upgrades, is fragmenting the Android ecosystem, and it will result in a net decline in the Android installed base by 2015, despite the continued success of Android smartphones.”

However, sales of the Amazon Kindle Fire and other “forked” versions of Android will pass “officlal” Google Android sales by 2014, it forecasts. And for Microsoft, sales of the Metro tablets will accelerate in 2014. Why not until then? Because the software base is comparatively new, “it will take time for the developer ecosystem to build.”

So – the old order is changing. A couple of points from the last few days. Microsoft announced its results, and they showed that Windows revenue rose more strongly than PC sales did – indicating that enterprises have begun to upgrade from Windows XP (which is still going, still getting support, and still suits some businesses, it seems) to Windows 7. That led to a slight uptick in profits, even while revenues per PC sold stayed pretty level. As below:

Note the downward dip and upward spike around the launch of Windows 7 – but also the slight downward trend in profit (and slighter one in revenues) per PC sold. That seems to be due to more piracy when PCs sell in the Far East, meaning Microsoft doesn’t get a 1:1 payment per machine. PCs, though, are going to keep selling, and there’s no sign of people abandoning Windows. But if IDC keeps revising those figures downwards as the years go on, and the PC market turns instead to tablets, then Windows, as a business, will slow down too. (Of course, Microsoft will still make money hand over fist from Office. It’s not going bust in a hurry.)

The other point: Apple suffered from not having new laptops. Analysts had been expecting it to sell about 4.2m computers. Instead it managed 4.0m. What’s clear from the split is that while desktop sales held up, laptop sales barely budged compared to last year. The ratio of laptops to desktops, which had been bumping around 75% for the past few quarters, fell to 70%. If laptop sales had stayed at their typical ratio (by Apple releasing new MacBooks and MacBook Airs), the total would probably have been at least 4.5m. Cook evaded the question of whether sales had slowed there because of the lack of transition, but the numbers don’t lie.

And one other memorable quote from the discussion came when Cook was asked whether Apple would begin offering a hybrid – say, an iPad with a keyboard you could attach and detach (like the Asus Transformer).

Q: “Can you comment about why you don’t believe the PC or the Ultrabook and tablet markets or your MacBook Air and tablet markets won’t converge? Isn’t it realistic to think in a couple of years we’re going to have a device that’s under 2 pounds with great battery life that we can all carry around and open as a notebook or close up in a clever way and use as a tablet?”

Cook: “I think, Tony, anything can be forced to converge. But the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn’t please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user. And so our view is that the tablet market is huge.”

Seems like Cook and Apple are going with the flow here, at least.

An iPad app aimed at children allows vast amounts of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds – as we found to our cost

My seven-year-old sister Lily is scarily competent with technology; she can change my phone’s screensaver, send a text message and download apps. The flipside to this is that she is also a target for the games industry. It is easy to see why, considering she recently racked up a £200 bill feeding an imaginary animal apples and seeds on a supposedly free iPad app.

Having had his debit card blocked due to an uncharacteristic amount of spending (£200 had been spent on his iTunes account in a matter of days), my dad assumed that some kind of fraud had taken place; after numerous phone calls and emails to Apple, we found out that the money had all been charged to a game called Dream PetHouse. Once we established that my dad had not been indulging a penchant for animated companions, all eyes turned to my little sister, who promptly burst into tears.

Deciphering some sense through the sobs, we managed to work out what had happened. Lily often plays free games on my dad’s iPad, and as a busy father of five he hadn’t thought twice about downloading another free app to keep her amused. The app Dream PetHouse, is a cartoon simulation game which involves users feeding “the world’s cutest animals”, caring for them in a tree “staffed by Chipper and his group of adorable chipmunk friends”. What is not so cute, however, is that in order to progress at any meaningful rate, spending is required.

The concept is reliant on continually improving your pet in order to advance through the levels, and unless you are prepared to move at a snail’s pace, you need to spend. Prices vary, but some of the purchases are frighteningly expensive; a “ton of fruit” costs £20, while a “mountain of seeds” costs £40. All that is required to spend is for the user to enter their iTunes password; Lily had seen my dad put in his password and so thought nothing of entering it again and again when prompted by the game.

My dad was careless – he should have kept his password secure; but I feel the company behind the game have a case to answer too – not in law, but ethically. iTunes lists the game as appropriate for those over the age of four, and the cartoon animals are clearly designed to appeal to children. The tone of the customer support service demonstrates the extent to which the app is aimed at children; when I asked about the payments for “food”, I received an email addressed to “Pet Lover Harry” from a “friendly Chipmunk Nurse” named Joy.

Why, then, does a game so clearly designed for children allow such vast sums of money to be traded for virtual fruit and seeds? Small children are now incredibly skilled with technology, but they should not be encouraged to play a game where money beyond their comprehension is involved.

The electronics giant assembles its gadgets in China. But, according to new research, if it moved its production home, it would still be hugely profitable and create thousands of jobs

An old rule states that you are a mere six degrees of separation away from anyone else on the planet. For some people, however, the world is even smaller. So let me propose an amendment: you are only one relative, friend or acquaintance away from one of the late Steve Jobs’s creations.

You may be browsing this on a new iPad, one of the 30m Apple sold last year. Or perhaps you’re viewing it on an iPhone screen – which would be unsurprising, since the market analysts at Mintel say that the iPhone 4 is the most popular handset in Britain today. Maybe your children are reluctantly putting away their iPods, of which Apple sells 5m worldwide every three months (a remarkable figure, but half the 10m Jobs and his colleagues were shifting each quarter in 2008 and 2009).

And if you’ve really never done any of those things, rest assured your prime minister has. “The cool thing is that I now control my iMac from the iPad, to play out through the speaker,” David Cameron boasted to the Telegraph a few months after moving into No 10. It was one of those canny-to-the-point-of-irritating references the Old Etonian used to specialise in; a flash of his real-world accreditation.

As Cameron knows, Apple is a byword of everyday sleekness. Yet there is another way of viewing the company. Focus instead on the way it does business, and all those iPhones, iPods and iPads aren’t just exemplars of design and user-friendliness: they are devices that destroy western jobs. And they do so needlessly, because if the California-based giant manufactured its goods in America rather than China, it could still make profits that would be the envy of every other US business.

This is, I know, an unorthodox position. When journalists or politicians discuss the way that western companies make goods in China, or anywhere else in Asia, they almost always start from the premise that this is how business is done nowadays. This is the commonly accepted logic of globalisation, which enables companies to keep their costs down, which allows the ordinary American or Briton to spend less money shopping, and which also offers poorer nations in the east to develop their economies. Expensive shirts might still be made in Italy; high-end kitchens might be assembled in Germany – but the future of mass production inevitably lies in China.

Apple has both made and benefitted from that argument. In January, the New York Times ran a lengthy investigation of the technology firm’s manufacturing processes, which began by disclosing a conversation in 2011 between Jobs and Barack Obama. The president asked why Apple products could not be made in the US. The most admired man in Silicon Valley was reportedly blunt: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

Very few people argued with that assessment. In other ways excellent, the New York Times’ piece had an elegiac tone, conveyed by the headline How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work. And the following commentary went on in this it’s-not-you-it’s-me vein. It wasn’t Apple’s fault it didn’t hire Americans to make its goods: it was America’s. US workers weren’t skilled enough; not enough of them were trained in engineering.

All this should be familiar to anyone who’s followed the Westminster debate on globalisation, where prime ministers from Thatcher to Blair to Cameron have agreed that if Britain is to attract employers, its workers need to shape up. Students need to brain up and get degrees, adults need to retrain or sharpen up their attitudes. Even then, the British have to prepare for a post-industrial future, where they do the design and marketing and the Chinese (or the Indians, or the Vietnamese) make the goods.

Such national self-abasement has the merit of at least feeling like a policy; but it’s debatable whether on its own it really will pull in big employers. Apple, after all, used to base its manufacturing in the US. Jobs used to boast about how the Mac was “a machine that is made in America”. And according to new research given exclusively to the Guardian by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc), it’s clear that it would not only be affordable for Apple still to make its goods in America, it would remain hugely profitable.

Using a mix of Apple’s own filings and industry data, the academics broke down the cost of making one product in particular: the wildly popular 4G iPhone. Assembled in China, the total cost of putting together just one phone was $178.45. Compare that with a sale price (including downloads) of $630 and Apple makes $452 on each phone: a whacking gross margin of 72%.

Chinese labour accounts for a tiny proportion of the company’s costs: $7.10 for each phone, which accounts for about eight hours of assembly. So what would it cost to make the same iPhone in America? The Cresc team took the average wage in the US electronics industry of $21 per hour and calculated that the total production cost would increase to $337.01. That is a big jump – but it still leaves Apple with a gross margin of 46.5% on each iPhone – a level that Cresc’s Sukhdev Johal estimates would probably still make it the most profitable phone in the world.

So: two models of making one of Apple’s most popular products, and two models for distributing the profits. The made-in-America model still leaves the California giant with a profit margin that most companies can only dream of, but would create hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the US to boot. That may strike you as laughably naive, but it’s more akin to enlightened self-interest: just think of the way Henry Ford raised wages so Ford workers could buy his cars.

The made-in-China model, on the other hand, has carried no such social benefits, either in Apple’s home country or in the People’s Republic. Last year, Apple built up cash reserves of $100bn – more than the US government. Indeed, it was so much money that the company was stumped how to dispose of it. Tim Cook, who is now CEO of Apple, announced a few weeks ago that he would begin buying back shares and paying dividends to investors. Among other people who benefited from this arrangement was Cook himself, who was awarded $376.3m in Apple stock when he took over last year. That pile of shares is now valued at around $634m. The people who win from the made-in-China model are big investors and top executives.

In the case of Apple, outsourcing manufacturing is not about keeping costs to customers down – they are still paying huge prices for the latest handset or tablet computer. Nor is it about the company’s survival: it would still do tremendously well were it to bring those factories back home. No, in the case of Apple, moving jobs offshore has become a way of directing ever more money to those at the top of American society.

This is not just my conclusion, or that of the Cresc team; it is backed up by the Asian Development Bank. In a 2010 study of an earlier model of the iPhone, ADB researchers concluded: “It is the profit maximisation behaviour of Apple rather than competition that pushes Apple to have all iPhones assembled in the PRC.”

This division of labour has certainly not helped China very much. Foxconn, which makes those iPhones, has to work to an incredibly tough contract with Apple that forces it to keep all costs to a minimum. This surely helps account for why Foxconn, whose client list is almost a Who’s Who of the smartphone sector, has had repeated troubles with its workforce, including at least 18 suicide attempts by workers in 2010 alone. After that, and the terrible publicity that followed, Apple put pressure on its subcontractor to raise workers’ pay and improve conditions. But it didn’t take the most obvious route of doing so, which would be: pay more to Foxconn, and direct it to use that surplus to increase wages.

The reason for concentrating on Apple in this fashion is not because it’s a terrible company, but because it’s an exemplary one. It has become the business success story of our age: the firm others want to emulate, and prime ministers want to name check. And yet there is a paradox here. For all the stylishness and sleekness of its products, the Apple business model is an unattractive and, over the long term, possibly an unsustainable one. It subcontracts work that offers the Chinese little prospect of economic development, while at the same time selling to Americans and others products they want but increasingly don’t have the jobs or incomes to buy so readily.

Apple’s rise to primus inter pares in the business world has coincided with a wider social trend: a general anxiety about the decline of the west. Some of the reasons for why America, Britain and others are on the slide are large and abstract. But some of the factors are smaller and closer to hand, like the iPhone in your pocket or the Mac waiting for you at home.

• Cresc is holding a workshop on the “Apple Business Model” at Senate House, University of London on Wednesday

A reader wants to buy a tablet for her partner’s birthday, but would prefer something more ethical than an iPad

My partner is very keen on having a tablet with Wi-Fi and I’ve decided to buy him one for his birthday. We are both very concerned about Apple’s disgraceful practices in China and therefore I do not want to purchase an iPad, although the price of the iPad 2 and performance is similar to what I’d be looking for. However, I am very aware that jumping on the bandwagon can mean purchasing an alternative (Samsung, Amazon Kindle Fire etc) that may not be any better ethically but has just managed to escape media attention. Do you have any suggestions for a trying-to-be-ethical consumer? Is there such a thing as an ethical tablet?
Name withheld

I don’t think any tablet is “ethical” in the purest sense, and it’s not even possible to decide which tablet might be considered least harmful. There are far too many things to consider, and we don’t know enough about any of them. Nor, depressingly, do most of the companies that make and sell them.

The problems extend far beyond the factories where mobile phones, tablets and PCs are assembled. The supply chain extends to thousands of small factories that supply components, and to the companies supplying raw materials. This includes minerals mined in the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, where occupational hazards may include rape and murder. (The Enough Project has rated IT suppliers for their use of Conflict Minerals.)

Once all these shiny gizmos have been shipped from the factory, there are many other considerations. How long will they last? Can they be upgraded or repaired? How will they be disposed of? Does the manufacturer support a recycling scheme? (Electronic waste is now a major global problem.)

From this point of view, smartphones, tablets and some laptops are a disaster. They have sealed-in batteries and some are designed to make them hard to open, let alone upgrade. Products that should last five years may be junked after 18 months or so, either because the user has a “free” upgrade or they are cost too much to repair. The current gadget boom could soon result in the world’s most expensive landfill.

When it comes to the ethical treatment of factory workers, Apple’s brand name has suffered the worst effects, for two reasons. First, Apple was implicated in a spate of suicides at Foxconn’s largest factory at Shenzhen. Second, The New York Times published a damning indictment of the company, In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad. I think this article, which quoted former Apple managers, finally prompted Apple to start taking the problems seriously. Apple joined the US-based Fair Labor Association (FLA), and chief executive Tim Cook made a highly-publicised visit to the factory.

Apple has also come in for criticism because of its very high profits – it has more than $100bn (£62) in the bank – and because of its high-end brand marketing. It might very well be that people work in worse conditions in the small factories producing “white box” (unbranded or off-brand) tablets, but they are making products that sell at very low prices on razor-thin margins. The point is that factory workers assembling Apple products are getting a very small share of the total. Apple could and can afford to do better.

There are other reasons why Apple workers are under stress, even if working conditions appear to be as good as or better than those on other production lines. One is that the vast majority of Apple products are made by one company, Foxconn, where most computer companies have larger ranges made by perhaps half a dozen different contract manufacturers. (Apple also uses Quanta and Pegatron.) The sheer size of the Foxconn operation – factories with 300,000 to 500,000 workers – leads to logistical problems bussing workers around and feeding them, and military-style policing.

Another problem is Apple’s big-bang approach to marketing, with a rapid replacement of models. Foxconn workers have to assemble millions of units as quickly as possible so that there will be supplies for queuing fans. This leads to enforced overtime, and may encourage Foxconn’s use of “interns”: young vocational students who are supposedly doing work placements but are reportedly “de facto workers on the production line” (PDF).

Other factors include Apple’s products being more difficult to make, according to Foxconn, and Apple’s insistence on secrecy.

The result is very high staff turnover. In 2010, according to SACOM (the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior), 220,000 of the 420,000 workers in Shenzhen had joined Foxconn within the past six months, and the turnover rate is about 35% per year, according to the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions. There are always thousands of jobs going at Foxconn because thousands of workers quit. That’s not a good sign.

You could certainly avoid buying any products assembled by Foxconn, which is thought to produce almost 40% of China’s exports of technology products. However, as mentioned, I can find no substantial evidence that Chinese workers at rival contract manufacturers – Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Pegatron, Inventec and so on – are treated significantly better. It’s a price-driven market, and many companies will cut a corner to save 10p. When you’re making tens of millions of units, those pennies add up.

Only the companies that use contract manufacturers can change that. The New York Times article quoted a former Apple executive saying: “Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.” Companies setting up their own factories with their own employees, as Sony did, might be even better, but the economic trends are strongly against that.

In general, Hewlett-Packard seems to be the best of a bad bunch. In 2004, HP’s Bonnie Nixon-Gardiner helped create the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC) to set out basic labour and environmental standards for contract manufacturers, following the FLA model. In 2005, she went to inspect Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen, according to Business Week, and set up a system to inspect hundreds of factories owned by HP’s main suppliers.

HP made by far the best response to the Make IT Fair campaign in 2008, is the highest-scoring company in The Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics, and gets a green light on conflict minerals. However, HP’s TouchPad tablet flopped, and it probably won’t have an iPad competitor until Microsoft releases Windows 8 late this year.

You could consider a Samsung tablet, because Samsung is a major component supplier: indeed, Samsung is the largest supplier of iPad parts, and the target of numerous Apple lawsuits. It is now the leading “anti-Apple”, which is not to claim that its contract workers are any better off.

At this point, I sympathise with those protesting against Apple, or even boycotting its products. However, a boycott is unlikely to have much impact given Apple’s rapidly increasing sales.

Also, I wouldn’t necessarily rule out buying an iPad. There are other questions to consider, including the ease of use, software availability, expected product life and resale value. It seems to me that a product that is used a lot, and used for a long time, has more value than one that is used less or is rapidly discarded. A Samsung Galaxy might be better or worse than an iPad from this point of view (for example, is your partner an Android phone user? What apps does he need?), but the issues are worth considering.

There are other ways to try to improve working conditions in China. This includes supporting organisations such as Make IT Fair, GoodElectronics, SACOM, SOMO (Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen: The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations) and their campaigns. It’s OK to put pressure on Apple, but the whole consumer electronics industry needs to clean up its act.