According to a recent news article, Motorola's next flagship phone, the “Moto X” will be the first smartphone assembled in the U.S. While not all the components will be made here, the designers and engineers are based in the U.S. and assembly will be in a 500,000 square foot facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The company estimates it will be adding 2,000 jobs by August.
More good news: Apple will be making one of its iMac computers in the U.S. this summer, and Lenovo has already started making some to its computers in North Carolina.
Motorola enumerated some of the advantages of doing this work in the U.S. and they are exactly what we have been talking about in our meetings: rising labor costs in China, ease of design changes when the work is done here, leaner supply chain, faster response to purchasing and customer demands, and low cost energy (especially natural gas).
Please note that there was no federal stimulus money spent in creating these jobs. A free-market environment created the right opportunities for a company to make a sound business decision. Motorola did not expound on why Texas was chosen, but access to labor, energy, and a pro-business climate in a right-to-work state could not have hurt Texas any in the decision making process.
