Word: low-cost
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...breadth of its operations. Marks jokes that he nearly flunked the only manufacturing course he ever took at Harvard Business School, but he made up for it by understanding globalization earlier than most of his peers. He has led Flextronics to locate its factories to take advantage of low-cost, relatively low-skilled labor in places like China, while having more complicated products made in more developed countries in Europe and Asia...
...Low-cost factories in Eastern Europe allow Flextronics to deliver products to wealthier consumers in Western Europe weeks faster than do factories in Asia or Latin America. "About 70% of world electronics are sold in the Christmas season," says Roger Moore, executive director at the Flextronics industrial park in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary. "If you've launched a new product in August, you really don't know whether it will take off until the season gets moving around the end of October. If you discover it's a real hit, and it is being shipped from China, it won't reach...
...China's first PDA based on Microsoft's Chinese Windows CE in May 1999. It has also promoted H-Open, a Chinese operating system it co-developed with a government think tank. But today, PDAs with Windows account for just 15% of Legend's sales, while buyers flock to low-cost devices running cheaper software. No outside developer or competitor has adopted H-Open. All this offers a sobering lesson for the multinationals that are cautiously entering the market. Earlier this year, Compaq introduced a Chinese iPAQ. But with a retail price of $723, it is hard to imagine sales...
...even that elasticity may be wearing thin. Other manufacturers, unencumbered by settlement costs or a $100-million-a-year P.R. budget, are challenging Big Tobacco with dozens of low-cost smokes, and black-market cigarettes (including the ones that major companies give away as marketing ploys) are on the rise. Were it not for the relatively hospitable air in Washington - John Ashcroft?s Justice Department is looking to dump the Clinton suit and George W. Bush declined to add another round of excise taxes - the long-predicted death of Big Tobacco (and the concurrent rise of Little Tobacco) might have...
Neeleman obsesses over keeping employees happy, and with good reason. Airline watchers say JetBlue's ability to stay union-free is critical to its survival as a low-cost carrier. The industry's labor-relations record is famously toxic. "But if there is anyone who realizes the importance of treating their employees right, it's the management team at JetBlue," says airline analyst Holly Hegeman, the editor of planebusiness.com...