Since I heard that Apple had curtailed plans to build an Indian operation, I’ve been wondering why and BusinessWeek claims to have found some answers. In short, it was a cost thing, India’s getting too expensive and turnover’s too high. I wonder if we’ll see this as a larger trend. I tend to believe this is an exception limited to Apple and the fact that their focus was strictly technical support.
I dont buy this arugment. You don’t figure out that costs are too high just a month after setting up operations. I am sure Apple must have spent a very long studying the ecnonomics of outsourcing before they decided to setup operations in India. I feel there is more to this story!
Gaurav, The whole story still intrigues me too. Do you have any other theories here? Whatever the reason, it’s hard to imagine that it would be something that couldn’t have been researched at the outset. Assuming it wasn’t something that was already researched, it must have been some sort of surprise. Apple is obviously very image/quality/design conscious — so maybe there was some quality gap between what they thought they could get and what they could actually get. Or maybe it was just simply poor planning on Apple’s part.