Apple confirms death of iPhone worker in China
Update at 10:15 a.m. PDT: Comment from Apple added.
Apple confirmed on Tuesday the death of a man who worked at an iPhone plant in China.
According to various Chinese media reports, the worker at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn committed suicide last week after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype for which he was responsible went missing.
"We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told CNET on Tuesday. "We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect."
Apple did not comment on the details of the worker's death, allegations regarding Foxconn's questioning of the worker, or the status of the allegedly missing phone prototype.
Various English-language sites have been repeating and translating Chinese media reports.
According to Chinese media, 25-year-old Sun Danyong was responsible for shipping iPhone prototypes to Apple. Danyong reported the missing device to Foxconn after realizing that one of the 16 iPhones he received was no longer in his possession.
Foxconn is Apple's longtime manufacturing partner in China. Apple has used the company to manufacture all of its iPods and, more recently, all of the iPhone models.
Foxconn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. A guitar player for 20 years, Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to write and record songs on a Macintosh with Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Jim is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Trying to figure out how you made the jump from the ?what people do for money? comment to ?insinuating Apple had the poor guy knocked off? ? are we a bit tense? Were you up all night practicing cutting-and-pasting? Maybe you also lost a few winks mastering that new-fangled voice dialing feature? Just wondering, did you put that little apple sticker on your car for money or was that a personal favor to Steve?
YOU are way too intense. I don't know what the heck you are talking about. I'm not insinuating anything, I'm trying to find out what Sartor is insinuating. It's an honest question, is he suggesting the factory worker was killed for money, or that he stole the prototype for money? or that someone stole the prototype and that's why he killed himself. Get back on lithium and try to use that key to the left of the shift key more frugally.
i know what is says... i'm saying I can see someone killing somone for an iPhone 4G but i cant see someone killing themselves because one got lost, although coulture is very different there
though I want to agree with u, but that only works for "some" asian countries, I wouldn't count chinese/mandarin/cantonese speaking countries in just yet. No offence, just I've worked there for year last year and boy... some of the things I've seen...
though I want to agree with u, but that only works for "some" asian countries, I wouldn't count chinese/mandarin/cantonese speaking countries in just yet. No offence, just I've worked there for year last year and boy... some of the things I've seen...
edit: oops just realized i only read the first part of ur comment, sorry
That said, I wouldn't be surprised that the employee really did commit suicide -- it's not much of a guilt thing, but a pressure thing. Assuming that he considered himself having a bright future (he probably did as I don't think everyone work there had their hands on a 4-gen iPhone prototype), losing the prototype might make him think that it dealt a major blow to his career. This is not an uncommon cause of suicide among Chinese.
Although personally, I think Steve Jobs did it himself. I can just see it now ...
I guess that's acceptable conduct for Apple suppliers -- anything goes according to Apple's infamous secrecy rules, right? No doubt Foxconn is under severe pressure from Apple for losing the prototype and they decided to make this guy the scapegoat.
Foxconn has had a long history of running sweatshops to build iPods and mistreating employees, yet Apple has always "looked the other way". Disgusting.
Second I know people who had transgressions in R&D, who are not bulied, threatened, killed or committed suicides. Their penalties varied from let go, to slap on the wrist.
Third, Apple secrecy culture is uncommon, they chased bloggers with clubs for publishing pics or nearly end products not some "rocket science prototype".
Finally Apple may had stringent clauses with Foxconn, that would have severe consequences for Foxconn because of this episode and hence they had pushed their employee to brink, Apple is not directly culpable but there can be some clauses that are destructive to the workers of the partners, which needs to be looked into.
Your credibility has gone off the charts with that one.
do you know what a metaphor is? If you are autistic, I excuse you, because only they have the inability to understand metaphors and take things literally. Apple sued bloggers (if you want) literal wording. Oh! dont come after my credibility? this is the second personal attack in just two posts, go f urself.
thank you for your graceful comments... its time for you to move on to apple store and bootup in fanboy mode.. wait.. you are already in fanzombie mode.. well good luck,..
Those krazy kommunists!
The suicide is mentioned in a book titled "Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton" by Markos Kounalakis. Apparently, a member of the engineering team committed suicide just before the original Newton's launch. Although no connection was formally made, it was speculated that he broke under the pressure of the grueling pace needed to get it out on time.
What's the point of denying things just because you're not aware of them? Just because you haven't heard of something, doesn't mean it never happened. And accusing people of lying? Get off your high horse dude.
Say what you will about weakness, but things have to be pretty bad if a person would rather die than face what lies ahead. This person was looking at losing his job and potentially being blacklisted in the industry in a culture that places ultimate value on labor and the benefit an individual provides to the state.
This is an extreme tragedy and I feel deeply for this poor soul.
When I get depressed I think of my heroes who went through worse times and survived, I take strength from them. I guess that there is an honor in that.
I hope Apple learns from this though, if it leaks, shut the hell up and stop acting like some whiny idiot. If I were Apple I would see to it that the family is taken care of and remind the company's building these prototypes, yes, its a big deal when you lose one, but its ok, just let it go and move on.
just want to put it out there, I recently lost a friend to suicide too, it was 3 weeks ago... and it was relationship related, danm we need better ways to talk these people out of it, he never spoke to anyone about it and now that he passed on two families suffer and many friends felt the bomb that he dropped, wish i had a chance to stop this...
2. Apple has every right to protect it's intellectual property.
3. Apple needs to express in the most forceful terms available that contractors who make products or parts of products for Apple will respect the rights of workers.
If Foxconn is unable to treat all workers with respect, Apple should find a new supplier. If no alternative supplier exists Apple should create one.
Go back to trying to prove we never landed on the moon.
Please.
I just hope they do the right thing and support the poor guys family.
However, I really don't see what it has to do with denying the moon landings.
Undoubtedly people die in car accidents going to work, is that somehow the employers fault? People die of heart attacks while using the toilet, is the toilet maker, the plumber or the building codes responsible??
Seriously, you and others of your ilk really need to step back and think about things rationally before you post such absurd things.
thats peral jam btw evenflow
Yes, he might have been a little imbalanced, but by most standards, we're ALL a little imbalanced.
"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced."
It's awful hard to disguise a flying chair impact as a "suicide"... :)
Cody
You can't really blame any individual company. The blame really falls on the last 30 years of appeasement and unwillingness to demand fair trade. If we had insisted in the 1980s that the RMB be allowed to float against the dollar, the situation would be vastly different than it is today. For starters, we'd have several million more manufacturing jobs than we do today.
I doubt it.
The average white collar job in China makes ~$8,800 US per year. Factory line workers get much less. That's less then the Federal minimum wage in the US. I doubt you'll find many legal workers in the US willing to work for so little. It's no secret that Apple has high profit margins on their products. In order to maintain that profit level they would have to almost double the sales cost of the iPhone in order to cover manufacturing wages in the US.
I
Who cares if the west is turned into a bunch of welfare states, as long as we can import things cheap....
They should be made to raise their standard of living to equal ours before they are allowed to import anything. It's ridiculous to lower our standards to their level. Just one more way the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Oh man, I keep forgetting the Dollar. Of course the most important thing is rich people getting more Dollars. How could I possibly compare that to peoples lives and living standards....silly me...
In the old days, Foxconn was primarily manufacturing in Taiwan, but since then it has moved most of its operations to sweatshops in mainland China -- basically special factories for producing iPods, where workers are paid just $50 month while working 15+ hour days.
- by mgabrys July 21, 2009 1:37 PM PDT
- "Hi, I'm a PC and I don't torture wage-slaves in China"
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- by geotopia July 21, 2009 2:20 PM PDT
- Ooh, I can see a major motion picture in a few years, "Blood Phone". Set in China, where a young factory worker slips an iPhone off the assembly line and swallows it whole to smuggle it out of the factory. Hey, maybe that's how THIS guy died!? He was just fine and then some "shake-the-baby" app went off as the phone passed through his large intestine and the GPS signal stopped his heart! Have they conducted an autopsy?
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- by Eddie-c July 21, 2009 4:14 PM PDT
- He didn't swallow it - it went somewhere else. ouch. ;)
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- by Seaspray0 July 22, 2009 7:37 AM PDT
- @eddie-c. After you swallow something, it always ends up somewhere else.
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- by The_Decider July 22, 2009 11:01 AM PDT
- And how many PC's are not made in Asia? What about those substandard parts that OEM's use?
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- by McAdams July 22, 2009 10:24 PM PDT
- What a sad, miserable, idiot you are. People die everyday all over the world in all sorts of businesses. It's called 'life"--no guarantees of immortality. Your statement obviously shows lack of intellect.
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (120 Comments)Apple's response it pathetic. If they had any morals, they'd go with ANY other manufacturer on EARTH. This isn't the first time Foxconn was brought up on abusing workers.
Beating up workers to the point of suicide (or throwing them out the window) - we have an iPhone app for that! Makes baby shaker look like a Disney app.
In the meantime I get to look at my shiny apple iPhone - dipped in blood that Apple finds "regretful". Know what I regret doing? Buying my iPhone from a bunch of morally bankrupt middle management ******** who care none for "little people" and even less for "little yellow people".
I had no idea Steve Jobs was of proud cold German stock.
It's also sad that you are allowed to make such an asinine statement without backing it up with facts.
Apple has always put out quality products that other companies are constantly copying or trying to emulate (Windows, for example?;Aqua interface; iPhone?)
If you don't like Apple or the iPhone, please spew your vomit elsewhere. But please don't take this personally.