Tim Cook: Apple Will Make Macs in the U.S.

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During an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company plans to begin making some of its Mac computers in the U.S.–but he didn’t say which ones. “We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States,” asserted Cook.

Ronnie Polidoro with NBC News reported, “Cook, who joined Apple in 1998, said he believes it’s important to bring more jobs to the United States. Apple would not reveal where exactly the Macs will be manufactured. ‘When you back up and look at Apple’s effect on job creation in the United States, we estimate that we’ve created more than 600,000 jobs now,’ said Cook. Those jobs, not all Apple hires, vary from research and development jobs in California to retail store hires to third-party app developers. Apple already has data centers in North Carolina, Nevada and Oregon and plans to build a new one in Texas.”

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Adam Satariano and Josh Tyrangiel added, “Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to spend more than $100 million next year on building Mac computers in the U.S., shifting a small portion of manufacturing away from China, the country that has handled assembly of its products for years. ‘Next year we’re going to bring some production to the U.S.,’ Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. ‘This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.'”

CNN’s Doug Gross noted, “Cook did not say which computer he was talking about, but some models of the new iMac have been arriving stamped ‘Assembled in the U.S.A,’ prompting speculation that it may be the company’s flagship desktop. An Apple spokesman told CNN that Apple will be investing $100 million in the move. He downplayed the iMac speculation, though, saying Apple has always done some assembly of its computers in the United States and calling the stamps on some 21-inch iMacs ‘coincidental as part of this story.'”

Victoria Shannon with the New York Times observed, “Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold in 2011 were manufactured overseas. Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas. An additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products, mostly abroad.”