Apple Can Afford to Make iPhone in U.S., Researchers Claim

In recent years, Apple's success has prompted scrutiny of everything from its environmental practices to the treatment of its workers in Asia. Others, meanwhile, opine that Apple should build more of its popular products in the U.S., given that it has approximately $97 billion in cash.

Prior to his death, Steve Jobs that that was not feasible. "Those jobs aren't coming back," the Apple co-founder said. But a group of researchers argue in a new paper that Apple is capable of returning its manufacturing operations to American shores.

"If Apple were willing to accept lower margins and the 8 hours of assembly labor on the iPhone were on-shore and paid at U.S. rates, Apple would still have a gross margin of nearly 50 percent," researchers concluded.

The 25-page paper, titled "Apple Business Model: Financialization across the Pacific," was constructed by a research group at The University of Manchester's Center for Research on Socio-Cultural Change. It primarily focuses on Apple's relationship to Foxconn, the company that manufactures iPhones and iPads in China, and the future of low-wage manufacturing in Asia in the service of Western brands.

"Certainly, Apple should not be an object of praise and emulation because its business model is not generalizable without harm to the U.S. and limited benefit to China," according to the paper, which was written by researchers Dr. Adam Leaver, Professor Karel Williams, Julie Froud, and Sukhdev Johal.

The study used a number of financial analysis papers as well as publicly available data from Apple and Foxconn to weave an argument against the continued off-shoring of Apple device manufacturing.

Thus far, Apple has opted to use part of its cash hoard for a . The program, which will be executed over three years, will utilize about $45 billion of domestic cash. For more on that, see .