Apple wants total supplier security

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.

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