Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer and Apple's most important supplier, said nearly one-third of its production capacity is now outside of China, a figure that will likely keep growing due to the "inevitable" decoupling of Chinese and American supply chains.

(Nikkei Asian Review, August 12)

Brady Wang's key takeaways:

The trend to shift production outside China will continue, but key questions are by how much and how fast.
Hon Hai publicly stated it’s gone from 25% in June last year to 30% today.
Tough to put an exact figure of where we’ll end up, but if we were to look at Apple products, we can see what parts would make sense for ex-China prioritization:
- iPhone: Low degree of automation makes it difficult to expand non-Chinese production quickly, but it could meet US demand by 2021.
- iPad: High degree of automation and low demand in the US, so easier to expand outside China.
- Mac: Although production automation is higher than the iPhone, I think we’d still need to wait until 2021 to meet US demand, which is high.
- Apple Watch: Likely see ex-China production bases from this year.
- AirPods: The future design of AirPods from SMT to SiP can improve the level of production automation; some are already being ‘Assembled in Vietnam’.

Foxconn Planning for &#039;Inevitable&#039; Split Between US-China Markets

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Foxconn Planning for 'Inevitable' Split Between US-China Markets