Comment by vacri
10 years ago
Where do you draw the line? If a company does own the factory that builds their widgets, do you claim they're not vertically integrated because they don't own the mines that get the materials, nor the transport network to get it to and from the factory? At the other end, do they need to own the bank with which they take payments from customers?
You don't need to own all elements in a vertical stack to be vertically integrated.
Apple sells iphones. Who makes the iphones? Not Apple.
Apple designs iPhones. They manage the fabrication of parts very closely and manage their assembly and QA more closely than most of their competitors (like, big enough to make demands of Foxconn or cause them to build specialized factories). Then they sell the phones directly to consumers. They are (literally) on the Wikipedia page as an example of a vertically integrated company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration
I'm not saying you're wrong... but it doesn't look like you're right.
You're playing fast and loose with the definition of 'make' there. 'Physically assemble' is not the only element of 'make'.