MSI chairman Joseph Hsu has been telling Digitimes that a rise in monthly salaries in China will not affect the company's profit.

Hsu said that in the long term as all companies will eventually face pressure to raise wages and the increased costs for personnel will be reflected in end-product prices. His outfit had always paid a bit more and recently had to jack up wages because of labour shortages.

The issue of how much Chinese workers are paid has become more important as Western companies, such as Apple, start to get tarnished by the working standards of their Asian partners. Some Eastern outfits have refused to raise salaries fearing that the increased costs will scare away cost cutting US businesses.

Hsu however has indicated that the price of increases is not that much. MSI's costs from assembly lines currently only account for about 3.5 per cent of its overall operating costs, of which, half are from labour. A 10 per cent increase in salary will only affect its gross margin by 0.1-0.2 per cent.