Despite comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook last year about India remaining a lower priority than many other emerging markets, a report from Reuters today detailed how Apple is “aggressively pushing” the iPhone in India through payment plans and a new marketing campaign. Cook suggested last year that India wasn’t the biggest international focus for Apple and multi-layer distribution in the country “really adds to the cost of getting products to market.” According to Reuters, on top of an aggressive marketing campaign and payment plans, Apple also aims to increase the distribution channels Cook mentioned last year:
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Apple announced today on its Investor News page that CEO Tim Cook, like in previous years, is scheduled once again to speak at the upcoming Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. Apple will make a live webcast available for anyone who wants to listen to live-streaming audio from the conference call. Cook’s talk is scheduled for 7:15 a.m. PST on Feb. 12 and will be available to stream from Apple’s website.

If you miss the live broadcast, Apple will most likely post audio of Cook’s full talk after the event as it did last year. You can listen to Cook’s presentation from the 2012 Goldman Sachs conference here.

We told you last month that shipping times for Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMacs slipped from an estimated delivery of 7 to 10 business days to 2 to 3 weeks. Today, iMacs are continuing to experience supply shortages with shipping times on many international Apple Stores once again pushed back. As noted by French language blog macg.co, Apple’s online store is now listing the 21.5-inch iMac as shipping in 3 to 4 weeks and the 27-inch model as available in 4 to 6 weeks in at least France. While Apple has yet to update its U.S. website with the new shipping times, Apple stores in Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, and many other European Union countries are now listing the longer wait times for new iMacs.

We heard that Apple expects to reach a supply and demand balance for the new iMacs (and iPad mini) within the next couple of months, but CEO Tim Cook recently noted that supply constraints will most likely continue into Q1. The same thing goes for Apple’s new iPad mini that, as of this week, is now shipping with an improved delivery time of 1 to 3 business days in at least the U.S. and Canada:

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In a recent update to its supplier responsibility pages, Apple has listed Quanta Computer USA as a final assembler of its Macs.

Final Assembly Facilities

These are facilities where Apple products are assembled and packaged for distribution.

One of the locations of Quanta’s final assembly is 44350 Nobel Drive Fremont, Calif., indicating that some Macs are or will be built in the facility.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook noted in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams late last year that Apple would invest $100 million to move at least one of its product lines to the United States. Quanta has assembled Macs for Apple for a long time in Asia.

Fremont may sound familiar, because we recorded more than a few of the new iMacs originated from Fremont after the November launch. These iMacs were delivered via FedEx and had the ‘Assembled in the USA’ moniker not only on the package but also on the actual machines. It now appears that Apple is confirming these products are indeed being assembled in Fremont.

Quanta, it should be noted, has U.S. assembly plants in both California and Tennessee. Previous package slips and Origin labels below.

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Following reporting what CEO Tim Cook referred to as another record-setting quarter, today the Apple executive sent out an email to employees congratulating the team. Within the email, Cook thanked employees for their “incredible hard work and focus” and highlighted that the company sold over 75 million iOS devices during the quarter.

Like last year, when Apple held a Town Hall meeting following its Q1 results near a windshield repair Sugar Land TX company, Cook is asking employees to attend an employee communications meeting scheduled for today at 10 a.m. Pacific time. The email sent out last night following Apple’s earnings results conference call, and it noted that employees would be able to submit questions via AppleWeb in advance.

Apple will also broadcast the meeting live throughout Cupertino and other Apple locations. Cook’s full email is below:

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Apple CEO Tim Cook has been ordered by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose to give a deposition related to an ongoing private lawsuit that claims Apple, Google, and others entered “no-poach” agreements, as reported by Bloomberg. Cook isn’t the only executive named in yesterday’s order. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt will also be deposed on Feb. 20, as well as Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini later this month.

Koh told lawyers yesterday that Apple founder Steve Jobs was copied on e-mails at issue in the case, and that she found it “hard to believe” that Cook, as Apple’s chief operating officer at the time in question, wouldn’t have been consulted about such agreements.

The judge said she was disappointed that senior executives at the companies involved hadn’t been deposed before yesterday’s hearing over whether she should certify the case as a group lawsuit. The class would include different categories of employees whose incomes, their lawyers argue, were artificially reduced because of the collusion. Koh didn’t rule on class certification.
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Apple just announced on its Investor Page that it would report its Q1 2013 earnings Jan. 23. As it does once a quarter, Apple will issue a press release at 4:30 p.m. EST with the numbers and follow with a conference call at 5 p.m. EST to discuss the results with CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and more. The report will give us a close look into how Apple fared during the holiday shopping season and its outlook for 2013. As of the last earnings report in October, Oppenheimer said he expected revenue of about $52 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $11.75 for Q1 2013. Past numbers, questions from investors on the conference call typically bring out new, interesting pieces of information from Apple, and you bet 9to5mac will provide full coverage. [Apple]

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[youtube=”http://youtu.be/JtcQMFeNeTw]

In January 2012, The New York Times published a lengthy report covering the problems with Foxconn’s plants in China. The piece caused uproar, and it pushed Apple to perform its own audit in the factories that make its products and work to address the issues the audit found. Close to a year after publishing its first report, the New York Times has followed up with a second piece that found working conditions are getting better. One of the first steps was in March, when top Apple executives met with Foxconn executives to reduce worker hours and increase wages in 2013. This is said to create a ripple effect that will benefit the entire manufacturing industry.

Past wages and hours, changes are also coming about within the plant. According to the New York Times, new safety measures like automatic shut-off devices and protective foam are now in place to protect workers when doing their difficult jobs of assembling various Apple products. The piece told a story of one worker receiving a wooden, sturdy chair more comfortable on her back than the green plastic stool she once used. Apple also tripled the staff at its California headquarters to ensure safe working conditions across the world.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Earlier this year, CEO Tim Cook spoke a lot about worker safety while changes were underway. “We insist that our manufacturing partners follow Apple’s strict code of conduct, and to make sure they do, the Supplier Responsibility team led more than 200 audits at facilities throughout our supply chain last year,” said Cook in an email. “These audits make sure that working conditions are safe and just, and if a manufacturer won’t live up to our standards, we stop working with them.” Subsequently, Apple issued a statement to the New York Times this week on the recent changes:

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Earlier today, a number of customers who ordered the new 27-inch iMac when it went on sale on Nov. 30 started receiving notifications from Apple that their orders have now shipped. Apple quoted estimated delivery dates for these customers ranging from Dec. 18 to the end of the month. However, it appears some might even receive their new iMacs earlier with one 9to5Mac reader receiving an estimated arrival date of Dec. 13.

Apple changed the availability estimates for new 27-inch iMac orders on its website last week from “3-4 weeks” to “January”, indicating some new orders might not be available to ship until the end of next month. Unlike some of the new 21.5-inch iMacs originating from Fremont in the United States, many report orders of the 27-inch models as shipping from Shanghai, China.

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[msnbc id=”50112247″ width=”650″ height=”375″]

NBC just posted official clips from its exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier today. The interview aired at 10 p.m. ET tonight, and now the full video of the interview has already made its way to YouTube. In the interview, Cook talked about product design, Apple’s plans to bring production of some Macs back to the United States in 2013, his thoughts on Apple, being CEO post-Steve Jobs, and his “intense interest” in TV. We’ll update this post when the official high quality versions hit the web. Part 2 of the interview is continued below:

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Apple CEO Tim Cook’s much hyped NBC interview is set to air tonight at 10 p.m. EST, but we are already learning much of what will be discussed during the conversation that took place in, among other places, Apple’s Grand Central retail store location in New York. Earlier today, a profile from Bloomberg revealed Cook’s plans to bring at least some production of the Mac back to the United States in 2013, but he also hinted that the company has big plans for a next-generation Apple TV product. According to a preview of the interview on NBC’s website, Cook referred to the project as an “intense area of interest”—opposed to the “hobby” that the company has considered the product since its inception:

“When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years,” Cook told Williams. “It’s an area of intense interest. I can’t say more than that.”

iFixit

From iFixit’s ritual iMac dismemberment yesterday, we learn that the particular 21.5-inch iMac they bought says it was “Assembled in USA”. The moniker isn’t new—we’ve seen it since at least a few iMac models back on the packaging. But as far as we can tell, “Assembled in USA” wasn’t etched in the actual machine’s aluminum, leading people to believe that the iMacs that were shipped were “refurbished in the USA”. However, this forum shows that some were actually assembled and sold new with the “Assembled in USA” label (below—27-inch iMac, previous gen).

Regardless of previous endeavors, Apple is shipping new iMacs “Assembled in USA”.  PED at Fortune found one. Jay Yarrow at BI found one, too. This isn’t an isolated incident. We also heard that other new iMacs say “Assembled in China”, as you’d expect.

Still, it makes for an interesting question:  Is Apple building some of its iMacs in the United States? Is that percentage growing since it seems much of the first line of iMacs are coming with USA labels?

The “Assembled in USA” label doesn’t just mean that foreign parts screwed together in the U.S. either. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission assumes that a “substantial transformation” must happen in the U.S. for the label to be used.

Specifically, the FTC states that the label “Assembled in the USA” should be the following:

A product that includes foreign components may be called “Assembled in USA” without qualification when its principal assembly takes place in the U.S. and the assembly is substantial. For the “assembly” claim to be valid, the product’s last “substantial transformation” also should have occurred in the U.S. That’s why a “screwdriver” assembly in the U.S. of foreign components into a final product at the end of the manufacturing process doesn’t usually qualify for the “Assembled in USA” claim.

Example: A lawn mower, composed of all domestic parts except for the cable sheathing, flywheel, wheel rims and air filter (15 to 20 percent foreign content) is assembled in the U.S. An “Assembled in USA” claim is appropriate.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. The FTC gives the specific example of a computer manufacture:

Example: All the major components of a computer, including the motherboard and hard drive, are imported. The computer’s components then are put together in a simple “screwdriver” operation in the U.S., are not substantially transformed under the Customs Standard, and must be marked with a foreign country of origin. An “Assembled in U.S.” claim without further qualification is deceptive.

That means one of two things: Either Apple or its contractors have some sort of significant manufacturing operations in the U.S., or it is being deceptive in its marketing (something that sadly, isn’t out of character)…
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