"We didn't understand our costs, so we underbid and now are blaming Apple." - Wistron
Apple also pays suppliers on net 90. With inflation the way it's been, any miscalculation there will sink things. Not all suppliers know how to be banks too. Considering how much cash Apple has, this is really reprehensible.
As a supplier to Apple, the gross numbers are so seductive since they are larger than just about anything else, but the net numbers are orders of magnitude less.
No successful company is over-paying suppliers.
You can argue (and I will argue) that Apple's skill at squeezing their suppliers while still maintaining reliable supply chains is a huge part of why they're the biggest company in the world (and also why Tim Cook and not Scott Forstall or Jony Ive succeeded Jobs). That squeezing has real human costs, which Apple is insulated from.
They've outsourced the majority of their labor (and related liability) to a global cadre of high-volume, low margin suppliers, while capturing most of the value created by that labor by owning the Apple brand and maintaining tight control of information, resulting in an asymmetric risk/reward profile for Apple inc.
Large companies who've already scaled up their products are more incentivized to focus on cost cutting.
If Apple did not over-pay their suppliers, the M1 would not have been manufactured on the 5nm node.
But to be fair, that's what hardware manufacturers are supposed to be good at.
The whole point is that the ones who are good at it make money, the ones who aren't go out of business. That's capitalism in a nutshell at every level, and manufacturing especially.
I've always been surprised at how much of the business world runs on credit. You hear stories about how payments have been months-years delayed (or never show up).
I'd like to think if somebody got more than 100days behind I'd cut them off from the next shipment but never been in that spot.
I recall someone who had several on-site RedHat engineers at his company, doing some kind of Linux work. The company missed one Friday payment to RedHat. Every single RedHat engineer was gone the following Monday, never to return.
Why would you think that? There's no need to think that at all when considering the actions of Apple.
Apple very well may have unrealistic demands, but I believe it's also likely that Wistron may not have dealt with the level of QC, precision, and consistency that is expected of Apple products and based their estimates on experiences of working with more typical hardware companies.
it probably is a room full of parts and to win you have to commit to the non present parts too.
just like fashion production bids btw