Look, I'm not particularly into this debate. I believe the conditions are relatively horrible, but there are lots of horrible things going on in the world, so it's not where I'd spend my time. At the end of the day, working at Foxconn is voluntary, as opposed to, say, cancer.
That said, I'm glad that there are people in the world fighting this fight. It's how social change happens. And I'm going to assume that these people, who have decided this is their fight, have done their due diligence and decided that the best way to go forward is by attacking what is the biggest company and one of the most famous brands in the world.
So do I think Samsung is less responsible? No. But this isn't about being "fair" about the blame for corporations; it's about changing the conditions at Foxconn and in turn, China and the world. Targeting Apple has proven to be the best vehicle for that. So be it.
My proof is that they're attacking Apple, and it's working; we're talking about it. We're also talking about the fact that Apple isn't the only company to blame. Even that happened by attacking Apple.
I'm not being facetious: are you really in need of evidence? It's happening, and the people who are doing it have decided it's the best strategy. I can't go by anything else. And thanks to the nature of the experiment, it can't be repeated. It may or may not be optimal, it just is.
I agree that it's achieving the goal of pushing Apple to improve working conditions although given that they started their improvement program in 2006, it's highly debatable whether the recent outrage has achieved anything that wasn't already happening.
It remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on other manufacturers.
> Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
Equal responsibility but lesser blame. It's like slagging on a poor man for eating unhealthy food on the dollar menu at McDonalds. That man has an excuse, he doesn't have the money to shop for organic food at Whole Foods. Someone already super rich eating the dollar menu just to save a few bucks definitely deserves more blame not for eating healthy.
There isn't much money left over after Apple is done sucking the profit out of the phone industry.
"Sucking the profit" out of an industry is something that happens when you're undercutting everyone on price, driving prices down and reducing overall profits. Apple products arent exactly known for being cheap, so i think it's a stretch to say they're sucking the profit out of the industry; if anything they're conditioning consumers to pay more for a phone than they otherwise would.
They fact they are able to sell a lot of units at those healthy profit margins while competitors struggle to sell cheaper devices at razor thin profit margins (leading to revenue breakdown chart like you linked to) does not lend to them "sucking the profit out of the phone industry", it's them showing everyone else you dont need to peddle cheap crap because customers are happy to pay more for something that doesnt suck.
However, due to their all their competitors including Apple moving manufacturing to China, they have been forced to close their European plants and move to China as well.
To be fair, the correct analogy would be that someone (Apple) who makes a third person (contractors) stop beating the wife is more laudable than someone (Nokia) who never had to do it in the first place.
With great power comes great responsibility.