What you see: a sleek technological wonder of engineering that changes the way you work and play. What you don't see: the grunt manufacturing work that went in to designing, testing and building the device on a massive scale. That's where contract manufacturing comes in. Tech giants such as Cisco (NasdaqGS: ) use electronic manufacturing services, or EMS, to perform a large chunk of the production work for a bevy of devices: networking gear, computers, mobile phones, GPS devices and more. Though the EMS industry got its lift from Silicon Valley, other, older industries are now tapping their services more aggressively. "These are huge markets that are just starting to outsource," said Adam Pick, research analyst at iSuppli. The birth of the EMS industry dates back to 1981, when IBM (NYSE:IBM - News ) began selling personal...
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