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Gold Capped: Finding and keeping farmers
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Sometimes, the cheapest way to acquire the quantity of farmed mats you need is to buy them direct from a farmer. Buying them on the auction house is probably more convenient; however, your farmer has to pay the AH cut, and you have to beat your competitors to it. Having a farmer send everything they farm cash on delivery every day is a much more efficient way and has some serious benefits for both sides of the deal. How can you find farmers and convince them to send you goods instead of listing them on the AH? This is not a one-way deal. You need to make it better for a farmer to ship directly to you than it would be for them to go and post their items for sale. To do that, let's look at the annoying parts of selling farmed goods.
Apple orders enough parts to make 3 million iPhone 4s per month
According to DigiTimes, Apple has been ordering VGA lens kits (for use with the new front-facing camera on the iPhone 4) from supplier Asia Optical (AO) since May, to the tune 3 million (on average) per month. This is great news for AO, of course. If the current rate continues, they expect to get out of the red and reach profitability by the second quarter of this year. It's also good news for customers, as it suggests that Apple is stockpiling a whole lot of units. Pre-orders begin in the US and elsewhere on June 15, and sales of iPhone 4 will begin in the US on June 24th. At the current rates, Apple could likely produce 9 million iPhone 4s by its fourth fiscal quarter of the year ending September. Earlier this year, higher-than-expected demand caused shortages and delays for iPad customers. In fact, the international launch was pushed back about a month due to supply and demand trouble. That's definitely something Apple wants to avoid with iPhone 4. [Via AppleInsider]
44 Chinese workers sue Wintek over screen cleaner poisoning
If you've got an early Apple iPad, chances are its screen was cleaned with a banned substance called n-hexane, which releases a toxic nerve gas upon use. 2,000 workers at Wintek's East China LCD plant went on strike in January, claiming the substance was poisoning them, and now 44 of those reportedly affected are planning to sue. According to reports, the screen cleaner was originally used because it performed better than alcohol, but Wintek has since fired the factory manager who suggested n-hexane and discontinued its use. That didn't keep 62 workers from winding up in the hospital, however. The Guardian interviewed two hospitalized workers last week, and you'll find their stories at our more coverage link below. We're sure you'll agree these Chinese labor violations are getting out of hand -- let's hope this lawsuit spurs government and industry to do something concrete about worker abuse.
National Labor Committee report on Chinese CE factories uncovers deplorable conditions
Yesterday, the National Labor Committee produced a report on the working conditions at the KYE Factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong, China. KYE operates (like many factories in China) a live-work facility and generated sales of $400 million in 2008. KYE manufactures outsourced products for HP, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech, and ASUS. Their largest customer, however, is reportedly Microsoft. The report details some of what we've come to expect in stories of labor abuses -- near children, most of them women, working for 16 or 17 hours a day, living in nearly deplorable conditions, for less than a dollar an hour -- all so that the world's ever-growing need for / addiction to consumer electronics can be fed. Now, the gadget industry isn't the only offender by a stretch -- but it's quickly becoming one of the largest (in addition to producing a truly horrific amount of toxic garbage). After the break are some choice facts from the report that our readers might be interested in ingesting, so read on.
iPad suppliers forecast shipments of 8 - 10 million for calendar year 2010
Analyst Katy Huberty at Morgan Stanley has published a research note forecasting shipments of 8 - 10 million iPads during calendar year 2010. That's significantly more than previous estimates, which showed shipments of about 5 million devices. The note, as reported in a WSJ All Things Digital post, still maintains a sales estimate of greater than 6 million iPads for the year, since shipments are not necessarily equal to sales (some production remains in distribution channels at year-end). Huberty notes that investors who are bearish on the iPad say that it lacks a "killer app." She counters with speculation that the near-term target is for the sub-$800 notebook computer market, which currently appears to be in the range of 30 million units in the United States and 120 million units globally. In the long run, media (video, magazines, books) and apps that have been optimized for the iPad will significantly increase the market size. For the short term (through May, 2010), suppliers are expecting to ship 2.5 million iPads. This is up sharply from Huberty's initial estimate of 750,000 units through the end of June. Earlier this month, analysts were reporting that delays in early iPad production would limit the quantities available at launch. Huberty has not been particularly bullish on Apple in the past several years, but has recently been citing Apple's leadership in the mobile device space and talking about "bull case scenarios" for Apple's future.
TUAW Fact Check: Apple using underage labor? No.
When a lot of people get their news electronically, skimming over headlines through news aggregators, RSS feeds, and retweets on Twitter, sometimes the majority of information people will get from an article comes from the headline. When a headline leans towards the sensational side, or doesn't accurately reflect the information that's actually contained in the article, it's easy for poorly-represented news to spread like wildfire. This article from the UK's The Daily Telegraph, regarding Apple's self-initiated audit of its overseas manufacturing facilities, is a perfect example, with its attention-grabbing headline: "Apple Admits Using Child Labour." The sub-headline isn't any better: "Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones." Once a person reads those words, his or her knee-jerk reaction is most likely going to be one of disgust and horror. "How could you, Apple?" they might say. If this hypothetical reader owns a Mac or an iPhone, their eyes might glance over at it with anguished guilt; if they don't own any products from Apple, it's just one more reason not to buy them. If you dig beyond the headline, however, to the meat of the Telegraph's article, where the actual reporting finally begins? Then you get a completely different story as early as the first sentence: "At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple." That's pretty far from the image conjured by the headline, of legions of school-aged children lined up in factories and slapping together MacBook Pros when they should be slapping together algebra homework. Instead, we find a relatively small number of teenaged factory workers -- reprehensible, but not unusual at all for overseas factories. The end of this first sentence is even more important, because it puts the focus where it belongs: three factories which supply Apple. Two paragraphs later, we find another very important bit of news not reflected in the headline: "Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used." Other news sites performed better reporting on the matter, but at least one still had an easily misinterpreted headline. Read on to find out more.
Apple supplier audit reveals sub-minimum wage pay and records of underage labor
Apple's famous desire for total control over its operations seems to have extended to its manufacturing facilities as we've come across Cupertino's Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report, which details audits the American company has done of its overseas suppliers and the failures identified therein. The findings are pretty damning on the whole, with more than half (54 percent) of all factories failing to meet Apple's already inflated maximum 60-hour work week, 24 percent paying less than the minimum wage, 37 percent failing to respect anti-discrimination rules, and three facilities holding records of employing a total of eleven 15-year olds (who were over the legal age of 16 or had left by the time of the audit). Apple is, predictably, not jazzed about the situation, and has taken action through train-the-trainer schemes, threats of business termination with recidivist plants, and -- most notably -- the recovery of $2.2 million in recruitment fees that international contract workers should not have had to pay. It should come as no shock to learn that cheaper overseas factories are cutting illegal corners, but it's disappointing to hear Apple's note that most of the 102 audited manufacturers said Cupertino was the only vendor to perform such rigorous compliance checks. Still, we'll take what we can get and the very existence of this report -- which can be savagely skewed to defame Apple's efforts (as demonstrated expertly by The Daily Telegraph below) -- is an encouraging sign that corporate responsibility is being taken seriously. We hope, wherever your geek loyalties and fervor may lie, that you'll agree Apple's leading in the right direction and that its competitors should at the very least have matching monitoring schemes. They may have to swallow some bad PR at first, but sweeping up the dirty details of where gadgets come from is juvenile and has no place in a civilized world. Hit the source link for the full report.
Rumor: Tablet set for Q2 launch, manufacturers ramp up
More from the rumor mill: It appears that suppliers for Apple have already begun shipping touchscreen panels and will begin shipping aluminum casings for the much-anticipated-but-unannounced Apple "tablet" next month. This, according to Reuters, implies a Q2 product launch, right in line with what other predictions have been. Supplying the cases is AVY Precision Technology, and both TPK Solutions and Wintek Corp are supplying the touch screen panels. All companies are based out of Taiwan. TPK, through its German counterpart, Balda, was the initial supplier for the iPhone touch screen module. It's unknown whether Balda is currently involved or whether Apple went directly to TPK. The flow of information through Apple's suppliers has always been sparse, due to Apple's stranglehold on its own product message. Competition in the Taiwanese electronic component industry is fierce, keeping individual manufacturers toeing the line with Apple. But now that components are actually shipping, it's harder to hide how things are shaping up for the as-yet-unannounced product.
Are these the companies inside the next iPhone?
With the Pre's launch date looming it's nearly time for Apple to launch its counter-attack, and today we have what appears to be further confirmation of component orders for the so-called iPhone 3.0. DigiTimes is claiming to have a nearly comprehensive rundown of component suppliers for Apple's next-gen hotness, again indicating Samsung will be providing the memory, but also saying that a CSR chip will continue to handle Bluetooth duties, a 3.2 megapixel OmniVision sensor will tackle image-capture duties, and going on to list over a dozen other suppliers you may or may not have heard of -- though sadly failing to identify a CPU maker. All these companies are supposedly ramping up to begin shipments in May for a mid-2009 release, with a target of 5 million units for launch. However, while many of these names line up with rumors we've heard already, with no sources named and none of these suppliers able to comment, you might want to hit up your local source of salt for a grain or two.
New iPhone parts begin shipping from suppliers for June launch?
At this point there's little doubt that a new iPhone model (possibly two) will at least be announced in June. Now the Commercial Times have chimed in with a report saying that components from Taiwan-based suppliers have begun shipments as Apple (or its China-based assemblers, rather) readies for a "June launch" pegged by said suppliers to reach about 2-3 million units per quarter. A phone that looks to be fitted with a 3.2 megapixel still / video CMOS camera, digital compass (magnetometer), possibly 802.11n, more storage, and all the MMS, copy/paste, and push-notifications you can shake a gesticulating finger at. Assuming all the firmware sleuthing and rumors are true, of course.
Wal-Mart looking to sell "sustainable electronics" to help Mother Earth
The same store who snubbed the idea of installing Wii kiosks in its stores and is probably installing Big Brother style monitoring systems as we speak is now looking to take a bigger stand in its fight to keep Mother Earth in good shape. Following the trend of downsized packaging (as in Apple's iPod, for instance) and recycling as much as humanly possible, Wal-Mart is now setting a goal to sell "sustainable electronics" as early as next year. While it's not entirely out of character for a mega-corporation to jump on the green bandwagon, Wally World has "released criteria that will be part of a scorecard used to evaluate consumer electronics suppliers on the environmental sustainability of their products," essentially forcing suppliers who want to keep their products on such hot shelves to rethink their approach to "minimizing impact on the environment." While we can't deny that those huge boxes are quite enjoyable to take home, compacting PC titles to simple jewel cases would be a long overdue start to minimizing the amount of waste just sitting around, and we're such Toshiba is getting a nice pat on the back for already helping the retailer out.
