Workers at a Samsung factory construction site in Vietnam have clashed violently with local police, underscoring the sometimes extreme cost of meeting the worldwide demand for inexpensive smartphones and tablets.
Motorbikes and security guard housing went up in flames during the riot today at the $2 billion (£1.2 billion) factory complex, the Associated Press reports. Eleven people were injured, including one police officer, the wire service says.
Samsung is apparently moving some of its manufacturing to the site in an effort to further reduce costs.
In a statement sent to Wired, Samsung blamed the incident on a disagreement between construction workers and security guards over safety protocols at the site. The injured were sent to nearby hospitals for treatment, the company says. "Construction work in the area was not affected," the statement reads. "We will do our utmost to prevent any such incidents from recurring in the future."
Courted by the nominally Communist Vietnamese government, the
AP says, tech companies are moving production from China to Vietnam in search of cheaper labor. Smartphone parts are made in China, and the phones assembled for less in Vietnam. As Apple knows all too well, such monetary savings often come at a steep price. At the Chinese factories that help build iPhones, poor working conditions have lead to riots and suicides.
Despite the scandals surrounding the making of iPhones in China, however, we're sure to see similar stories emerge from Vietnam and other countries with low labor costs. The pressure to keep phone prices low -- coupled with the eagerness of governments to get the business of tech giants -- creates prime conditions for worker abuse. Consumer electronics industry analysts say that lower-end devices are a main source of growth in the mobile sector, especially in emerging markets, and handset makers are racing to hit low-as-possible price points to put phones and tablets in the hands of as many of those would-be customers as possible.
Ironically, Apple is one company more likely to escape ongoing damage to its image caused by the kind of violence seen at the Samsung site. Despite the release of the cheaper 5c model, the iPhone is still being positioned as a premium product. Though the sheer number of iPhones Apple makes to meet the strong demand puts immense pressure on factories, Apple's decision to sit out the race to the bottom would seem to give the company more room to absorb the costs of improved working conditions.
In the meantime, billions of people still don't have smartphones. In the race to put mobile devices in their hands, victory will likely go to whomever gets there first and cheapest.
If that's true, clashes like the one today are far from over.
This story originally appeared on Wired.com
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
