MOTO X: Touted as first smartphone that is purely american made or is it?

       The Moto X is Motorola’s first phone designed from the start under its new owner, Google Inc. The Internet search company bought Motorola Mobility for $12.4 billion last year. Google is heavily marketing its new flagship Moto X smartphone as being made-in-the-USA, but that label mainly applies to what's on the surface. The Moto X is the first smartphone to carry the “Made in the U.S.A.” designation. Labor costs are higher in the U.S. compared with Asian factories, where phones are typically made. But IHS said the Moto X is about 5 percent cheaper to make than Samsung Electronic Co.’s flagship Galaxy S4 phone. The firm said the Moto X’s overall production cost is just 9 percent more than that of Apple’s iPhone 5.
The findings come as little surprise, as the labor cost of a phone is just a small part of its production cost. IHS estimates that labor and other assembly costs Motorola $12 per phone for the Moto X, bringing the production cost to $226. That compares with $207 for the iPhone 5 and $237 for the Galaxy S4. IHS said Motorola is able to keep the cost of parts low by using standard components that don’t break much new ground.
 Motorola’s new Moto X phone doesn’t cost more to make simply because it’s assembled in Texas, research firm IHS said.
 A look inside the Moto X, which went on sale last month in North America, shows that nearly all of its parts were built in Asia or Europe. Market researcher IHS published a list of the phone's components last week based on a teardown of the hardware.
"If people are somehow thinking that 'made in America' is American top to bottom, they don't understand the electronics supply chain," IHS analyst Andrew Rassweiler said in an interview. "You've got three flags planted, possibly, in even one piece of silicon."
For decades, hardware makers have moved production to countries where labor costs are lower, primarily in Asia. The chip industry followed when governments and conglomerates in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea invested heavily to create chipmakers. The industry trend is overwhelmingly toward geographic dispersion and interdependence.
President Barack Obama has been calling for electronics companies to relocate manufacturing in the US, and Apple, Google and Lenovo Group have committed to assemble some products there. Motorola proudly calls the Moto X "the first smartphone ever to be designed and assembled in the U.S.A." The device is put together at a factory in Forth Worth, Texas , which will employ about 2,000 people, according to the company.
That's 2,000 jobs that America wouldn't have had otherwise, but it's tiny compared to the 1.3 million or so employees who work at Hon Hai Precision Industry, part of the Foxconn Technology Group. Assembly accounts for just 5% of the total cost of building each Moto X unit, according to IHS. At $12 a device, U.S. assembly is slightly more expensive than doing it in Asia, but components still represent the vast majority of the $226 price of making each phone.
 “With the Moto X, Motorola is reaping the public-relations and customization upsides of producing a smartphone in the United States, while maintaining competitive hardware costs,” said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director for cost benchmarking services at IHS.
IHS said the estimated $12 for assembly is about $3.50 to $4 more than other leading phones.
“Our initial estimate suggests the additional costs of onshoring the Moto X are relatively low,” IHS said.
Assembling in the U.S. has advantages beyond making Motorola seem patriotic. It helps the Google subsidiary to more quickly ship made-to-order hardware to AT&T customers who personalize their Moto X phones with colored plastic or wooden backs, said Mark Randall, the company's senior vice president of supply chain and operations.
"We're proud that Moto X is designed, engineered and assembled in the USA, but our decision to assemble here was also rooted in providing the best possible experience for consumers," Randall wrote in an emailed statement. "Assembling in the USA enables consumers in the USA to design their customized Moto X smartphones online and receive them in just a few days."
The phone went on stores with a quite low price and has been seen dropping fast of it's original price. Now the question is will moto X the first "american made" smartphone will go flying high or will die?