The problem here will be the marketing or branding charges that some offshore Apple company charge Apple Retail UK for use of the Apple brand in order to transfer the majority of the profit out of the UK to avoid paying tax in the UK. I'll bet it goes to a low tax country. Makes it very difficult to compete with Apple for local companies. Just the same as companies like Starbucks. I'll bet that the real costs are far less that $1.7bn if you remove the charges from offshore Apple companies.

Err...exactly what you see.... A few sites are blocked (they return an HTTP error), some sites are just excruciatingly slow (Google sites at present), most are exactly the same. And a VPN solves the first two issues. Do bear in mind that the vast majority of Chinese citizens don't really speak much English, so if you want to see what the locals look at, it would be in Chinese! And the Chinese internet ecosystem is far more vibrant then most countries...taobao, wechat, line, qq, baidu etc etc. Honestly - China is really not that different to anywhere else....in Shanghai (where I live), you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and any other large international cities (except that Shanghai has more Maseratis, Porsches, Ferraris, LV shops, high class shopping centers than anywhere else in the world I've been. As an expat, we are most definitely not the rich people.

Siemens Gigaset.....will allow you to copy phone book from handset to handset....supports bluetooth for headphones and syncing address book with PC

Sorry - but this misses the point. Yes, I guess that some US business will end up being serviced by people from off-shore, but actually not much. The reality is that the business is moving off-shore. The US no longer warrants having the huge percentage of the IBM employee base that it has as it no longer has the business from the US that would justify it. Countries like Brazil, China, India, Russia are growing much faster. So I would more regard this as moving the people to where the business is....and yes, there are some functions that could be done anywhere (such as development) - and why shouldn't other countries be given the opportunity to develop products for the world as well as the US, especially as they can do it for less.

IBM is a true international company, with commitments all over the world. The US still has the vast majority of the employees.

hmmm...thought it was 20% still. Anyway, the point still stands...profit for Lenovo = profit for IBM