Apple iPhone sales have been noticeably lagging of late, and while the company seems to be taking it all in stride, what the whole world does not see is the plight of the factory workers who piece together an US$800 smartphone while having to work for considerably much lesser pay whenever the demand for Apple technology goes down.
Of late, Apple has not been sharing iPhone unit sales and for a good reason. But, global internet technology research firm, Gartner, has all the details from their new study.
Figures from the study show that, in the last quarter of 2018, worldwide sales for iPhones reached 64.5 million units, giving the tech giant 15.8% of the market share for that period. However, what was jaw-dropping was those figures showed unit sales had gone down from 73.2 million with a 17.9% market share from the fourth quarter of 2017.
And the verdict was that, based on those figures, the drop which Apple had experienced was the biggest among all the smartphone brands in the market for that period. Although Samsung also suffered a decline from 2017 fourth quarter sales of 74 million to 70.8 million in 2018 fourth quarter sales, it was not as bad as the picture for Apple iPhones.
For the factory worker, this spelled very bad news indeed. It meant the days of plenty were over.
"In 2017, we were churning out iPhone 8s," Haixia, a worker for the Apple contractor Foxconn shares.
She goes on to say that she felt "thrilled" at the prospect of working overtime for up to 11 hours daily, even on weekends. Now she mourns the end of those days.
Haixia is merely one of 100,000 or more migrant workers whose living depended on plentiful overtime. And with the huge drop in iPhone sales as demonstrated by the Gartner figures, Foxconn as well as the thousands of workers who were dependent on those sales experienced for the first time a much earlier low season.
As a result, Foxconn made massive cuts from the salaries of Zhengzhou employees, including their benefits. For instance, some workers have had to walk almost an hour to get to their dormitories at the end of their work day, since there are no longer bus services available with budget cuts.
When there used to be free laundry service available to them, employees who have suffered salary cuts now had to spend a dollar's worth of laundry.
The fortunes---and misfortunes----of Apple have also become the workers'. When the iPhone was on the rise starting 2007, overtime was plentiful, and so were the salaries. Foxconn became the largest export contributor for the Henan Province, where Zhengzhou is located.
However, Henan Province mobile phone exports had markedly gone down to 23.7% in January which was valued at US$31.6 billion in 2018, a 38.4% share of the provincial exports.
With the misfortunes of apple closely intertwined with Foxconn employees', the manufacturer is now facing reflux of workers who no longer had overtime pay to fall back on.
"We are desperate for workers," according to one of the recruiters at Foxconn.
Because of massive resignations owing to the salary cuts, 50,000 workers are needed in two months, said the recruiter. Foxconn is now offering a US$149 bonus for new hires, to be paid in two monthly payments.
Plus it does not take much to be accepted as a production line worker. The minimum age is 16 and a half years, up to a maximum of 40 years and educated up till age 15 years.
The salary offering at Foxconn for assembling US$800 iPhones is US$2 per hour, and work is slated for 40-hour weeks.
