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Umair Haque, writing for Harvard Business Publishing, posits what Apple’s iPods would cost if they were made in the U.S., and it turns out it’s not as much as you might think.

According to Haque, “an American made iPod Classic costs just 23 percent more than a Chinese made iPod Classic: $58 more, to be precise.” That is surprising, and in light of Apple’s perennial troubles with manufacturers in Asia, worth thinking about further.

Claims of “iPod sweatshops” have been around for years, with some of the more damning accusations likening manufacturing facilities with worker dormitories to prison barracks. At best, the pay is low and workload high. More recently, Apple manufacturing contractor Foxconn came under scrutiny regarding the apparent suicide of a worker over an iPhone missing from a sample shipment. Since then, both Apple and Foxconn have expressed regret for the death, with Foxconn compensating the family of Sun Danyong. However, beyond that compensation, it’s unlikely anything will change in labor practices abroad.

That’s where Umir Haque’s thought experiment for building a “good” iPod in the U.S. comes in. The estimated costs of labor in the U.S. and China are $24.59 and $1.47 per hour. The estimated amount of labor required for final assembly is 2.7 hours, creating a difference in manufacturing cost of $58.19. Using that number, Haque extrapolated the costs for iPod categories. I took that a step further, listing every model of iPod and iPhone, iPhone cost being the subsidized price.

Obviously, the lower the price, the greater the differential. The shuffle would likely be hurt the most in the eyes of the consumer. That’s who the chart is really for, in my opinion. It’s a rhetorical question concerning whether you would pay more for an iPod or iPhone built with a living wage, as there is no chance Apple is going to move its manufacturing to the U.S. This isn’t to say Apple is bad. After the death of Sun Danyong, the company reiterated its stance that suppliers “treat all workers with dignity and respect,” and the company has broken no laws, least of all the Iron Law of Wages.

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The unofficially official iPhone for China moved a little closer to being real…or at least some nicely faked images were made real and posted at Sina.com.cn.

Of course, lending credibility to the pictures, they were later pulled and replaced with a less revealing one. The iPhone is supposedly set to debut around September on China Unicom’s network, the second-largest operator in China.

One image shows the iPhone syncing. Note the iPhone is on China Unicom’s 3G network, and will never be on a Wi-Fi network. That was a main sticking point in negotiations. Along with that previously reported news, there are a few more details from Macworld.

The iPhone is supposedly a WCDMA model. It bears the seal of approval of Chinese environmental regulators for a period of ten years. Other rumors floating around suggest Apple will be paid around $440 for each phone, though selling price will be less. Supposedly, China Unicom has a multi-year deal and has guaranteed a minimum of one million units sold per year. However, it should be noted that officially Apple and China Unicom are still in talks. Still, it’s hard to disbelieve one’s eyes.

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If you’re getting into the cellular phone business and want to be a big fish in a very big pond, you need to crack China. Mixed metaphors aside, China is an enormous mobile market. According to eWeek, it boasts more than twice the number of active subscribers than there are people living in the U.S. (630+ million subscribers vs. America’s population of 306 million.)

It’s a big deal, then, that Shanghai Securities News is reporting that China Unicom, one of the country’s largest operators (the second largest after China Mobile), has just signed on the dotted line with Apple and will be selling the iPhone 3G by the end of September.

China Unicom has more than 135 million subscribers. (By comparison, China Mobile has over 470 million.) The company has promised to sell between 1 million and 2 million units per year, with revenue of at least 5 billion yuan ($732 million) in the same period. Reuters reports that the deal gives China Unicom exclusive rights to sell the device for the next three years. According to MacDailyNews, the iTunes Store model will remain unchanged and operate as it does in most other countries, with the usual Apple approval process and 70/30 split.

Apple has been in negotiations with Chinese mobile operators for some time. Sticking points that prevented a deal sooner are rumored to have been focused first on Apple’s proposed revenue-sharing model, and more recently around the wireless radio technology found in the handset. Most mobile devices must remove wireless transceivers before they can be approved for sale in China. There is no word on whether this is the case with the iPhone 3G.

China has had a healthy black market in the sale of imported iPhones for several years. According to The New York Times, by the end of 2007, Apple had reported sales of 3.7 million iPhones. But only 2.3 million were actually registered on the networks of Apple’s wireless partners in the U.S. and Europe. Many of the “missing” iPhones found their way to China, where they were sold for as much as 4,000 yuan (almost $600).

This will be the first time the iPhone has been officially sold in the country, but it’s not for lack of trying. Those strained negotiations I mentioned earlier? Talks between Apple and China Mobile were reportedly on the rocks as far back as January 2008. So it seems Apple has been trying to break into China since the very first iPhone was released. However you look at it, signing a deal with China Unicom is settling for second best; will that still be enough to capture a significant portion of the mobile market in that country? If the answer is yes, Apple’s global smartphone market share is about to get a lot bigger.

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