This is the obvious conclusion of this minor news that may attract the attention of the engineers among us: Apple now has no less than seven suppliers for the Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) of its iPod (they expect a strong growth in 2007):
- Tripod Technology,
- Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board (NPC),
- Unimicron Technology,
- Compeq Manufacturing,
- Wus Printed Circuit
- APCB
- Gold Circuit Electronics (GCE)
In some industries, second sourcing to secure a supply merely means to add a second redundant supplier (its better to have two malls near your home, rather than only one). Apple pushes this strategy to the extreme.
Leave a Reply