China, the world's largest smartphone market since 2011, is also the hub of global manufacturing, accounting for anything from 60 to 80% of production. — SCMP
The search is on to identify the actual manufacturer behind the US$499 (RM2,123) Trump Mobile T1 smartphone, as most supply chain analysts cast doubt on the claim by the US president’s family that the device could be “proudly designed and built in the United States”.
China, the world’s largest smartphone market since 2011, is also the hub of global manufacturing, with estimates ranging from a low of 60 per cent to a high of 80 per cent of worldwide production. One in three of the 187 disclosed suppliers that provide parts for Apple’s iPhones is in China.
Trump’s T1 phone, encased in gold, features an AMOLED (active-matrix organic light emitting diode) screen that measures 6.78 inches, with a fingerprint sensor that supports facial recognition for unlocking. It has a main camera of 50 million pixels and runs on Google’s Android 15 operating system, Trump Mobile said on its official website without naming its chip supplier.
The phone comes with a subscription called the 47 Plan, priced at US$47.45 (RM201.90) a month, a nod to Trump’s as the 45th and 47th US president. Instead of building a new nationwide cellular network, the 47 Plan resells the capabilities of all three major US carriers: T-Mobile, Verizon Communications and AT&T.
The problem is, there are no AMOLED producers anywhere outside Asia, and the worldwide shipments are roughly equally shared by South Korean and Chinese manufacturers, said Joy Guo, the principal analyst of Omdia’s displays group. There were five AMOLED producers in China that all produced locally, while South Korean plants were within the country and in Vietnam, she said.
It does not end there. The typical smartphone comprised multiple components from the casing to the camera, the screen and the battery, most of which had to be sourced outside the US, which went against the claim that the phone was “made in America”, said Omdia’s senior analyst Aaron West.
“Considering the overall production capacity, the completeness of the supply chain and the assembly yield rate, it is indeed very difficult or costly to achieve mass production in the US at this stage,” said Chiu Shih-Fang, a senior industry analyst at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, adding that the cameras and the printed circuit board “can barely be sourced from the US”.
To be sure, the US does make smartphones, although at a much higher price. Purism, a 10-year-old electronics maker based in San Francisco, is the only notable US smartphone maker, whose Liberty Phone starts at US$1,999 (RM8,505).
“If the Trump Phone is promising a US$499 (RM2,123) price tag with domestic manufacturing, this announcement looks to be classic vapourware,” said Purism’s CEO Todd Weaver, according to a Tuesday report by Reuters.
All the specifications and design features of Trump’s T1 phone “indicate that they are using an ODM (original design manufacturer) to manufacture the phone,” said West, adding that the final step of adding a gold skin can be done in the US.
So who could be the actual ODM producer, and could Trump’s “made-in-USA” phone have Chinese parentage? Intrepid sleuths have uncovered two models that bear a striking resemblance to the T1.
The first is the REVVL 7 Pro 5G phone, made by the Wingtech unit of Luxshare Precision Industry based in Shenzhen. It is priced at US$171.65 (RM730.37) on Amazon.com, with a subscription plan for the US cellular phone network T-Mobile.
The other doppelgänger is Umidigi’s A15, featuring three back camera lenses arranged like those in the T1. The A15, made by Shenzhen-based Umidigi, is priced at a discounted US$129.99 (RM553.11) on AliExpress, operated by the Post’s owner Alibaba Group Holding.
Similar to Trump’s T1, both Chinese models come with a 5,000 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery and 256 gigabytes of storage. They also take similar designs to equip the selfie camera in the top middle of the screen. But the A15, much cheaper than the Trump phone, has a better main camera with 64 million pixels.
Officials at Wingtech, Luxshare and Umidigi did not respond to requests for comment. Trump Mobile, part of the Trump Organisation, did not immediately respond.
“Perhaps in the future it’s possible to achieve complete assembly and production in the US, but the first batch of phones delivered is unlikely to be made in the US,” said Robin Wang, an analyst from technology research firm Runto. – South China Morning Post
