[notfromhere]

At some point, your manufacturing partners in China are going to realize they control the means of production and can capture the added value by developing their own front office to market and sell the goods they already manufacture.

At what point do places like Dell become just licensing operations?

[Xixi]

IIRC that's the story of Asus: they started out by making parts, and at some point (a decade ago?) started to sell their own desktop/laptop computers.

[crispyambulance]

    > At what point do places like Dell become just licensing operations?

I don’t know, but I expect that there’s a roomful of well-paid asshole MBA’s at Dell working on that “problem” right now.

Everything outsourced and a few product mangers picking stuff out of a catalog— That’s ultimately what the supply chain leads to as corporations grow.

[cptskippy]

I thought Dell has always been reliant on ODMs. Were they at any point manufacturing components themselves?

Dell was still building PCs from off-the-shelf parts in the 90s so much of what they have was developed in the last 20 years. I've got to imagine they still have people in house who know how to setup manufacturing.

[notfromhere]

Even most of the assembly is overseas now. Eventually Asian companies are going to just market their own brands instead of letting Dell be a supply chain manager and marketer.

[cptskippy]

I wouldn't underestimate the value of supply chain management.

[criddell]

Dell did.

[wysifnwyg]

That's happening already as manufacturing countries ignore copyrights from the source country.