One of the biggest revolutions of the last couple of decades has been the move away from in-house manufacturing toward contract manufacturing companies. As The Houston Chronicle details, outsourcing to a manufacturing company helps businesses keep their costs low, their quality high, and their supply of products coming in a steady stream.
In no industry are the benefits of contract manufacturing more visible than in the global electronics industry. From the United States to Japan, the United Kingdom to Vietnam, more and more electronics companies are relying on electronics contract manufacturing companies to produce their products to spec at low costs. By cutting costs by using electronic manufacturing solutions, electronics companies can pass savings to their consumers, helping to ensure their products are bought up.
The advantages of contract manufacturing are seen as so important to the success of the current electronics market that almost every major company outsources their production. Here are just a few of the most popular consumer technologies that likely would’t exist, or wouldn’t be as popular, without the help of electronics contract manufacturing companies.
Four Popular Technologies That Rely on Electronics Contract Manufacturing Companies
- Sony’s Family of Playstation Products
- The Ill-Fated Xbox One
- The Groundbreaking Apple iPad
- Almost Every Part in Your Laptop or Desktop Computer
As the gaming site Gamespot points out, one of the driving factors behind Sony’s renewed success with its Playstation brand is its use of contract manufacturing firms. Both the Playstation 4 and the handheld Playstation Vita are manufactured in China, a fact which has kept quality high and costs low.
Unfortunately, as the financial news website The Street details, Microsoft hasn’t had as much success with their XBox One as they’d like, despite gaining all the advantages of electronics contract manufacturing services. Like the Sony Playstation, all Xbox Ones are produced in China.
The most famous use of electronics manufacturing companies, perhaps, is Apple’s turning to Chinese manufacturers to pump out high quantities of their extremely popular iPads, iPods, and iPhones. Sadly, Apple has gained a reputation for paying these manufacturers incredibly low wages, despite the fact that the manufacturers continue to produce the gold standard of consumer electronics for the American giant.
Of all the parts manufactured by electronics contract producers, the delicate, often tiny pieces that power our electronics remain the most common. From the lithium ion batteries that fuel our cellphones and laptops to the high capacity graphics processors in gaming computers, there isn’t a single computer that doesn’t have at least one component built by one of these companies.
What are some of the other technologies you know of that are made exclusively by electronics contract manufacturers? Let us know in the comments below. More research here.
