Proudly made in China: A Chinese Gadget Round-up

Every time we publish a review on this site, we normally get comments pointing to the “issue” that the device is made in China, implying that it’s of poor or sub-standard quality. While we try to have an open mind and make the case, we thought of just doing a round-up of our top gadgets “made in China“.

Apple iPhone. Since the first generation of the iPhone, it has always been manufactured and assembled in China. Apple has contracted Taiwanese company Foxconn to build the iPhone from ground up. Foxconn employs over 1.23 million workers, mostly based in Longhua, Shenzhen (China) to work on the iPhone. Their largest factory there is even fondly called the iPod City. The factory is so big it even has its own TV station, Foxconn TV. This list also includes the iPad, iPod and many other Apple mobile products.

Sony PlayStation 3. As one of the most popular game consoles, the PlayStation 3 was jointly developed by Sony, Asus and Foxconn and manufactured in China. Since its first release in 2006, over 75 million units have been sold worldwide. Its successor, the PlayStation 4 is set for release by Q4 of this year. Prior to PS3 in 2006, Sony was relying on Asus/Pegatron to produce its gaming consoles.

Kindle. Introduced by Amazon in 2007, the Kindle is probably the most successful eBook reader ever. And though Amazon does not reveal their sales figures, estimates put the Kindle Fire at about 17.4 million units by 2012. Again, Foxconn is the sole official device manufacturer of the Amazon Kindle.

Alienware. Widely known as a brand for gaming laptops and desktops with obvious X-Files inspiration. In 2006, Alienware was bought out by Dell but allowed it to retain the brand and maintain usual operations. Alienware laptops are manufactured by Quanta, a Taiwan-based ODM considered to be the largest laptop manufacturer in the world. Its manufacturing branch in China has over 300,000 workers. Other models of Alienware are also made by Compal, a rival and second biggest ODM to Quanta.

Google Nexus 7. The first Android tablet to be introduced and labeled under the Google Nexus brand, the Nexus 7 is a joint project by Google and Asus of Taiwan. Asus does not have its own manufacturing plant so it outsources majority of the job to Pegatron (once a subsidiary of Asustek but separated from parent company in 2010). Pegatron has over 100,000 employees worldwide but almost 90% of it is based in China where all its manufacturing plants are located.

BlackBerry Q10/Z10. BlackBerry’s latest handsets gained some attention this year and though the company is actually headquartered in Canada, all of the manufacturing and assembly are done in China. It outsources the job to Quanta Computer, the same ODM used by Alienware.

Macbook Air/Macbook Pro. Apple’s growing PC business is actually powered by Quanta Computer Incorporated, the same manufacturer as Alienware which handles the assembly of the aluminum-bodied Macbook out of China.

Lenovo ThinkPad. Lenovo Group Limited is a Chinese multi-national company based in Beijing, China. It bought the ThinkPad brand from IBM in 2005. By 2013, Lenovo became the biggest laptop producer in the world, surpassing HP. The company now has 16.7% market share, shipping more than 12.6 million laptops in Q2 of 2013. Its latest flagship laptop is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch is manufactured jointly by Compal and Lenovo in China.

Foxconn is also responsible for manufacturing the Nintendo Wii U, as well as some parts for the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 2. Foxconn has the largest client-base which includes Nokia, Sony, Acer, Motorola, Microsoft, Toshiba, Vizio, HP, Google, Cisco, Amazon, Apple and Dell.

Almost every gadget nowadays are either completely manufactured or assembled in China, if not just the parts/components. It only means that China can produce really great and affordable products. It’s really up to the ODM clients, like Apple or Amazon, how much attention to detail, R&D and quality control they put on these devices before they roll out of the factories.

This coming first week of September, we’ll be flying to the city of Shenzen in the Guangdong Province of China to visit one of the factories of Huawei. We’re interested to see and share what we’ll learn from that trip.