Last September, Foxconn assembly line worker Li Qi (not his real name) moved from the iPad unit to iDPBG, where iPhones get put together. It was a temporary thing, just ahead of the Christmas rush, but he was excited.The move, reports the First Financial Daily, came with a salary bump, free lodging, and a chance to work on the iPhone. He wrote in his dairy, "First time work closely on iPhone 4S, it is really the best smart phone of the world, both hardware and software are great."But the work was tough, tougher than working on the iPad. Volumes were higher — the line he was working on produced an average of 3,500 phones a day — and the hours were grueling. There were no breaks, other than lunch, in a day’s work. His shift started at 7 a.m., and overtime often went to 8 p.m.. He took one or two days off a month.The grueling work isn’t surprising given the wild demand for iPhones: 37 million were sold in the last quarter alone, compared to a mere 15 million iPads. To put those numbers in context, consider that in 2011, Apple sold a grand total of 156 million iPhones and iPads combined, which is about 30 million more than the number of Macs – from the MacBook Air to the Apple IIc – that Apple has ever sold in its three decades of existence.Ultimately the work was Li’s choice, and it was temporary. Besides, he was bringing down more money than ever – 5000 RMB (around $800) a month after taxes – and he was able to buy a house in his hometown. Li, like most of his coworkers, isn’t from Shenzhen, and having a house to go home to in Hubei province must have been nice to think about on the especially long days.This year, Li’s back at the iPad line, manufacturing the new model, and enjoying the relative calm. He and his colleagues get two or three 10 minute work breaks, in addition to lunch, and he’s only working six days a week. Li has taken a pay cut (down to 3500RMB) and he’s still not allowed to talk on the line, "but compare to iPhone 4S production, it is much easier."On the eve of the new iPad release, he was getting a little nervous. The device is much more powerful, he says, and the assembly more complicated. But if sales don’t pick up there’s a chance he could be moved back to iPhones. Less than two weeks into March, he’d already had three days off.Some of Li’s colleagues were recently relocated to a different production line in Chengdu, but his worries about leaving the iPad assembly line might be unfounded. And his workload could get a lot heavier too. According to ReadWriteWeb, “Apple could potentially sell 80 million iPads this year, about twice as many as it did last year, and more than the number of iPad 1s and iPad 2s combined.”Despite his intimacy with the device, Li, like his colleagues, didn’t get any memos about its name. "I thought it's called iPad 3, we always call it that before."Via ChinaHush. Image by Karson Yiu/ABC News.
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