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Made in China.

Doing some research into the global PC industry, I discovered that 82.6% of notebooks are made by Taiwanese companies. By 2010, it will be 92.5%, according to a mid-2006 press release from iSuppli. These Taiwanese companies, known as original design manufacturers, don’t just build notebooks–they design them. In fact, about 85% of the ODMs have outsourced the actual manufacturing to China.

So that American notebook you’ve been using? It was almost certainly designed in Taiwan and built in China. With tech support in India, of course. The only thing left for the Americans to do is choose the color of the case (Apple=white, IBM=black), advertise the product, and bill the customers.

4 Comments

  1. John Patterson

    Yellow Fever!!

  2. Dylan

    Now, John, that’s not fair. I’m not making some kneejerk anti-outsourcing argument here, and if the Chinese can build excellent notebooks cheaply (and they can), great. I do think it’s surprising how *much* of the notebook market is dominated by Taiwan and China, however — many people are not aware of that fact. And it is telling that US companies, who invented the notebook market, now cannot compete in it because the product has become such a commodity.

  3. Mark

    Hey, IBM laptops = Lenovo, Chinese-owned.

  4. Dylan

    Oops, good catch. OK, Dell=silver then.

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