You seem to have severely missed the point. Everbody knows that Apple manufactures their products in China. Everybody knows their supply chain ships them from warehouses around the world without ever visiting the US. That is nothing to do with any of this!
What the article is describing is as if Apple didn't design their own products, but instead shipped a barely working unbranded $16 android phone straight from an Alibaba seller when you tried to order an iPhone.
It's true that Amazon and Wallmart etc. have done sort-of this kind of thing for a long time (but slightly higher quality goods), but there's a huge difference between this and actual genuine proprietary goods. And even with Wallmart and Amazon, they don't usually make up a brand story to try and make buyers thinking they're getting a unique product from a high quality boutique designer and then selling them broken mass-produced trash.
Every company does this, even Apple. Every company outsources designs to third parties or buys the rights to an already made product to sell as their own. Apple does it with cables and maybe most famously the Apple branded iMac vesa mount. I'm sure they do it with other non core stuff too.
Entire car companies are nothing but rebadged models from another sister/partner brand. And oh boy you should read the heritage stories of those ghost brands. Audi takes a Porsche SUV, makes a few tweaks and boom, new Q7. Do they say that on their marketing or do they talk about how they spent years studying the needs of a family to be able to balance it with the desire for power and performance? Or how they finally achieved the perfect balance of sportiness and practicality?
Hasselblad and Leica, renowned for their photographic history and iconic designs sell nothing but rebadged cameras at the low end, at double the price of their counterparts of course. Do they redirect to Sony or Panasonic on their marketing pages?
Almost the entire fashion and makeup industries are like this.
These guys have bad quality control, ok, I'll give you that, but that just means they are bad at business. And It is not like their watches were such a fire hazard that all had to be banned from even entering an airplane.
What the article is describing is as if Apple didn't design their own products, but instead shipped a barely working unbranded $16 android phone straight from an Alibaba seller when you tried to order an iPhone.
It's true that Amazon and Wallmart etc. have done sort-of this kind of thing for a long time (but slightly higher quality goods), but there's a huge difference between this and actual genuine proprietary goods. And even with Wallmart and Amazon, they don't usually make up a brand story to try and make buyers thinking they're getting a unique product from a high quality boutique designer and then selling them broken mass-produced trash.