Iphones are probably the most modern cellphones in the world. The idea and model was first proposed by Apple company in California, but when looking at the back of each Iphone, there is a label saying that “Assembled in China”.

Besides Iphones, there are also many other stuff that are made or assembled in China while designed from a different place. It is frequent to see a “Made in China” label on toys, cloth, industrial materials, and hand-made goods.

There are two main aspects that explain why the phenomenon has happened: One is that most developed countries suffer labour shortage, and the other is that the majority of developing countries have cheaper and surplus labour.

For developed countries, especially European and North American countries:

• Low birth rate and rapid growth of older generation result in a lack of working generation.
• The value of economy is high while the number of employment is low, so the value of each employment is quite high to hire.

For vast developing countries, like China, India, and Philippines:

• The large number of population and the fast-growing population are the base of labour surplus.
• The total value of economy is fixed, but it is shared by a large number of people, so the value of each labour is much more cheaper than developed countries.
• It is a domestic policy that manufacture can absorb foreign capital to stimulate the gross development.

Based on that, there booms an emerging industry that named multinational manufacturing outsourcing to take advantage of labour surplus in developing countries in order to add more value to their economy, and help developed countries to make use of cheap labour so that the virtual value of product itself won’t be lost.

As we were doing a market analysis during the week past, it provides us a clear structure of how a product or company looks like in the market surrounding it. Personal speaking, I am quite interested in the competition part.

Is competition good or bad? That is the question which people think about harder since a long time ago. Well, it is obvious that no one likes competiton, especially a company in the market. “Competition has a bad reputation, however. Even in a Thesaurus, other words for ‘competitive’ are ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘cutthroat.’ That’s about as negative and unattractive as it can get.” (Coffin, Karen. http://www.nfhs.org/CoachingTodayContent.aspx?id=7023) As competition brings pressure, blows, and lack of confidence, people are afraid of losing any chance and being beaten by their competitors.

However, everything has two sides. Anything we are afraid of could turn to what we can make use of oneday, just like any weakness could turn to become an oppotunity. Same story happens for competition. Those pressure and blows could turn to motivations and encourage people think harder, prepare harder, and work harder. “Competition is a good thing. It’s about finding out how well you can do something under pressure. It’s about challenging yourself to get better. “(Coffin, Karen. http://www.nfhs.org/CoachingTodayContent.aspx?id=7023)

A competition could:

• Make a person or a company not easily get satisfied with what he has done.
• Stimulate people to work harder, and think more.
• Provide a person or a company their weaknesses directly during comparison with competitor.
• Help a person or a company correct any small mistakes in time before resulting in a loss.
• Teach a person or company to respect and learn from their competitors.
• Press up personal benefit or company profit since it helps eliminating faults.

Broadly speaking, competition lubricates the whole market to become more effcient, and narrowly speaking, it helps a person understand himself/herself better.