Silicon Valley plant named as Apple manufacturer

Apple on Friday listed a Silicon Valley facility as a location where the California company's Macintosh computers are assembled.

The addition to Apple's list of final assembly plants came less than two months after chief executive Tim Cook vowed to shift some computer manufacturing from China to the United States to catalyze domestic high-tech production.

A Quanta Computer Inc. operation in Fremont, California, not far from where Apple got its start, joined a roster of "final assembly facilities" heavily weighted with plants in China.

Taiwan-based Quanta was listed as operating Macintosh computer and iPod MP3 player assembly plants in China.

Cook, in a pair of interviews given in December, said one line of Mac computers will be made exclusively in the United States, but did not say which one.

Asked why Apple would not move out of China entirely and manufacture everything in the United States, Cook told NBC, "It's not so much about price, it's about the skills."

Cook also told the broadcaster that he hopes the new project will help spur other US firms to bring manufacturing back home.

"The consumer electronics world was really never here," he said. "It's a matter of starting it here."

(c) 2013 AFP