*foxconn* - -KINGDOM OF JOGA-

*SUBSIDIARIES* –>

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.,

trading as Foxconn Technology Group

and better known as Foxconn

*a ‘taiwanese multi-national electronics contract manufacturer’ with its headquarters in [‘tucheng’ / ‘new taipei city’ / ‘taiwan’]*

In 2010, it was the world’s largest provider of electronics manufacturing services[3] and the third-largest technology company by revenue

While headquartered in Taiwan, the company is the largest private employer in Mainland China and one of the largest employers worldwide

Terry Gou is the company founder and former chairman.

Foxconn manufactures electronic products for major American, Canadian, Chinese, Finnish and Japanese companies.

Notable products manufactured by Foxconn include the BlackBerry,[7] iPad,[8] iPhone, iPod,[9] Kindle,[10] all Nintendo gaming systems since the GameCube (except subsequent Nintendo DS models), Nokia devices, Sony devices (including the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles), Google Pixel devices, Xiaomi devices, every successor to Microsoft’s first Xbox console,[11] and several CPU sockets, including the TR4 CPU socket on some motherboards. As of 2012, Foxconn factories manufactured an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide.[12]

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. named Young Liu its new chairman to replace founder Terry Gou, effective on 1 July 2019. Young Liu was the semiconductor division chief as well as the vice-chairman of Foxconn.[13] Analysts said the handover signals the company’s future direction, underscoring the importance of semiconductors, together with technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous driving, after Foxconn’s traditional major business of smartphone assembly has matured.[14] One of the key directions of Foxconn is to focus its strength on semiconductors. It has invested hundreds of millions of yuan in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, and Jinan, Shandong province to build chip factories since 2018, which Liu mainly promoted. He also served as chairman of the company’s chip unit in Zhuhai, Guangdong province.[15]

The company has been involved in several controversies. In 2010, following a series of employee suicides at its factory in Shenzhen, Foxconn was criticised by labour activists, who accused the company of providing low wages and allowing employees to work past legal overtime limits.[16][17] Analysis found while the suicide rates among Foxconn workers was large in absolute terms, suicides on a percentage basis were slightly below that of the general population.[18][19]

History[edit]

Foxconn connector box tag in 2014

Terry Gou established Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. as an electrical components manufacturer in 1974. Foxconn’s first manufacturing plant in China opened in Longhua Town, Shenzhen, in 1988.[9]

One of the important milestones for Foxconn occurred in 2001 when Intel selected the company to manufacture its Intel-branded motherboards instead of Asus.[20] By November 2007, Foxconn further expanded with an announced plan to build a new US$500 million plant in Huizhou, Southern China.[21]

In January 2012, Foxconn named Tien Chong (Terry) Cheng chief executive of its subsidiary FIH Mobile Limited.[22] He resigned the same year, citing health problems.[23] At this time, Foxconn made up approximately forty percent of worldwide consumer electronics production.[24]

Expansion was further pursued after a March 2012 acquisition of a 10-percent stake in the Japanese electronics company Sharp Corporation for US$806 million and to purchase up to 50 percent of the LCDs produced at Sharp’s plant in Sakai, Japan.[25] However, the agreed deal was broken as Sharp’s shares continued to plunge in the following months.[26] In September 2012, Foxconn announced plans to invest US$494 million in the construction of five new factories in Itu, Brazil, creating 10,000 jobs.[27]

In 2014, the company purchased Asia Pacific Telecom and won some spectrum licenses at an auction, which allowed it to operate 4G telecommunications equipment in Taiwan.[28]

On 25 February 2016, Sharp accepted a ¥700 billion (US$6.24 billion) takeover bid from Foxconn to acquire over 66 percent of Sharp’s voting stock.[29] However, as Sharp had undisclosed liabilities which was later informed by Sharp’s legal representative to Foxconn, the deal was halted by Foxconn’s board of directors. Foxconn asked to call off the deal but it was proceeded by the former Sharp president. Terry Gou in the meeting, then wrote a word “義” which means “righteousness” on the white board, saying that Foxconn should honor the deal.[30] A month later, on 30 March 2016, the deal was announced as finalised in a joint press statement, but at a lower price.[31]

In 2016, Foxconn, together with Tencent and luxury-car dealer Harmony New Energy Auto, founded Future Mobility, a car start up that aims to sell all-electric fully autonomous premium cars by 2020.[32] A Foxconn unit, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, acquired Belkin International for $866m on 26 March 2018.[33]

In 2020, revenue was NT$5,36 trillion (US$193 billion).[34]

On 5 February 2020, Foxconn started producing medical masks and clothing at its Shenzhen factory in China, during the Chinese New Year and the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company initially said the masks it makes would be for internal employee use. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 led to a worldwide spike in demand for masks, resulting in global shortages.[35] In a letter to employees, Chairman Young Liu said, “I remember clearly how touching it was when Longhua Park produced our first mask at 4:41am on 5 February. It was the simplest yet most important product Foxconn has ever made. It not only supplied the group’s need for epidemic prevention it also contributed to the general public and boosted the morale of the group. All that resulted from our colleagues’ hard work.”

Following almost a year of public controversy regarding its COVID-19 vaccine shortage;[36][37][38][39] in June 2021, Taiwan agreed to allow founder Terry Gou, through his Yongling Foundation charity,[36] to join with contract chip maker TSMC, and negotiate purchasing COVID-19 vaccines on its behalf.[37][36] In July 2021, BioNTech’s Chinese sales agent Fosun Pharma announced that Foxconn and TSMC had reached an agreement to purchase 10 million BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines from Germany for Taiwan.[36][37] The two technology manufacturers pledged to each buy five million doses for up to $175 million,[36] for donation to Taiwan’s vaccination program.[37]

In mid-year 2021, Foxconn is announced the company will enter into more semiconductor production and will be expanding into supplying chips for electric vehicles and electronics equipment used for healthcare.[40]

International operations[edit]
The majority of Foxconn’s factories are located in East Asia, with others in Brazil, India, Europe, and Mexico.[41]

Mainland China[edit]

One of the production floors in Foxconn factory at Shenzhen

Foxconn has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities—more than in any other country.[42]

The largest Foxconn factory is located in Longhua Town, Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers (varying counts include 230,000,[41] 300,000,[43] and 450,000)[44] are employed at the Longhua Science & Technology Park, a walled campus[9] sometimes referred to as “Foxconn City”.[45]

Covering about 3 km2 (1.2 sq mi),[46] the park includes 15 factories,[45] worker dormitories, 4 swimming pools,[47] a fire brigade,[9] its own television network (Foxconn TV),[9] and a city centre with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, book store and hospital.[9] While some workers live in surrounding towns and villages, others live and work inside the complex;[48] a quarter of the employees live in the dormitories, and many of them work up to 12 hours a day for 6 days each week.[41]

Another Foxconn factory “city” is located at Zhengzhou Technology Park in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where a reported 120,000 workers are employed as of 2012.[49] The park produces the bulk of Apple’s iPhone line and is sometimes referred to as ”iPhone City”.[50]

Foxconn’s future expansion include sites at Wuhan in Hubei province, Haizhow, Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Tianjin, Beijing, and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, China.[42] A Foxconn branch that primarily manufactures Apple products is Hongfujin.

On 25 May 2016, the BBC reported that Foxconn replaced 60,000 employees because it had automated “many of the manufacturing tasks associated with their operations”. The organisation later confirmed those claims.[51]

In July 2021, the largest flood in 1,000 years hit the world’s biggest Apple iPhone assembly plant in Zhengzhou, but production was not affected.[52]

Brazil[edit]
All company facilities in South America are located in Brazil,[53] and these include mobile phone factories in Manaus and Indaiatuba as well as production bases in Jundiaí, Sorocaba, and Santa Rita do Sapucaí.[54] The company is considering more investments in Brazil.[55]

Europe[edit]

Foxconn has factories in Hungary,[56] Slovakia,[55] the Czech Republic,[57] and Turkey.[58] It is the second-largest exporter in the Czech Republic.[57]

The Turkey facility[59] is located 100 km west of Istanbul within European Free Trade Zone in the Corlu district.[60] It was established in 2010.[60] It covers 14,300 sq. meters.

India[edit]
As of mid-2015, Foxconn was in talks to manufacture Apple’s iPhone in India.[61] In 2015, Foxconn announced that it would be setting up twelve factories in India and would create around one million jobs.[62] It also discussed its intent to work with the Adani Group for expansion in the country. In August 2015, Foxconn invested in Snapdeal. They also signed an MOU with the state government of Maharashtra to set up an electronics manufacturing plant in Maharashtra with an investment of $5 billion within a 5-year period.[63] In September 2016 Foxconn started manufacturing products with Gionee.[64] In April 2019 Foxconn reported that they are ready to mass-produce newer iPhones in India.[65] Its Chairman Terry Gou said that the manufacturing will take place in the southern city of Chennai.[65]

Japan[edit]
Foxconn and Sharp Corporation jointly operate two manufacturing plants specialising in large-screen televisions in Sakai, Osaka. In August 2012, it was reported that Sharp, while doing corporate restructuring and downsizing, was considering selling the plants to Foxconn. The company was believed to be receptive to the plan. The acquisition was completed with a $3.8 billion deal in August 2016.[66]

Malaysia[edit]

As of 2011, Foxconn had at least seven factories in the Johor state,[67] at Kulai, where it is developing an industrial park that includes four factories that comprise fully automated assembly lines as well as fully automated packaging lines.[68]

Mexico[edit]
Foxconn has a facility in San Jerónimo, Chihuahua that assembles computers,[69] and two facilities in Juárez – a former Motorola production base that manufactures mobile phones,[70] and a set-top box factory acquired from Cisco Systems.[71] LCD televisions are also made in the country in Tijuana at a plant acquired from Sony.[72]

South Korea[edit]
The company invested $377 million in June 2014 to pick up a 4.9 percent shareholding in a South Korean IT services provider, SK C&C.[59]

United States[edit]
Foxconn announced on 26 July 2017 that it would build a $10 billion TV manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin and would initially employ 3,000 workers (set to increase to 13,000).[73][74] As part of the agreement, Foxconn was set to receive subsidies ranging from $3 billion to $4.8 billion (paid in increments if Foxconn met certain targets), which would be by far the largest subsidy ever given to a foreign firm in U.S. history.[75][76][77][78] Some estimate that Foxconn is expected to contribute $51.5 billion to Wisconsin’s GDP over the next 15 years, which is $3.4 billion annually.[79] However, numerous economists have also expressed skepticism that the benefits would exceed the costs of the deal.[80][81][82][83][84] Others have noted that Foxconn has made similar claims about job creation in the past which did not come to fruition.[75][77][85]

Foxconn was also exempted by Governor Scott Walker from filing an environmental impact statement, prompting criticism from environmentalists.[86] The plant was estimated to contribute significantly to air pollution in the region.[87] Environmentalists criticised the decision to allow Foxconn to draw 26,000 cubic metres (7×106 US gal) of water per day from Lake Michigan.[77] Given water concerns, Foxconn is spending $30 million on zero liquid discharge technology.[88] Foxconn is also required to replace wetlands at a higher ratio than other companies; Foxconn must restore 2 acres of wetland for every 1 acre disturbed instead of the ratio of 1.2 to 1 for other companies.[88]

As of 4 October 2017, Foxconn agreed to locate their plant in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin,[89] and broke ground for the plant 28 June 2018. President Trump was in attendance to promote American manufacturing.[90][91]

In January 2019, Foxconn said it was reconsidering its initial plans to manufacture LCD screens at the Wisconsin plant, citing high labour costs in the United States.[92]

Under a new agreement announced in April 2021, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million with 1,454 new jobs. Tax credits available to the project were reduced to $8 million

Major customers

The following list consists of Foxconn’s present or past major customers. The list is provided in alphabetical order.

Their country of origin or base of operations is in parentheses.

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)[93]

Amazon.com (United States)[10]

Apple Inc. (United States)[94]

BlackBerry Ltd. (Canada)[95]

Cisco (United States)[96]

Dell (United States)[97]

Fisker Inc (United States) [98]

Google (United States)[99]

Hewlett-Packard (United States)[100]

Huawei (China)[101]

InFocus (United States)

Intel (United States)

Lenovo (China)

Microsoft Corp. (United States)[102][103]

Motorola Mobility (United States)[97]

Nintendo (Japan)[104]

HMD Global (Under Nokia Brand) (Finland)[94][105]

Sega (Japan)

Sony (Japan)[106]

Toshiba (Japan)[107]

Vizio (United States)[108]

Xiaomi (China)[109]

FIH Mobile[edit]

FIH Mobile is a subsidiary of Foxconn offering services such as product development and after-sales support. It was incorporated in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands in 2000.[110]

On 18 May 2016, FIH Mobile announced the purchase of Microsoft Mobile’s feature phone business. Microsoft Mobile Vietnam is also part of the sale to FIH Mobile, which consists of the Hanoi, Vietnam manufacturing facility. The rest of the business has been sold to a new Finland-based company HMD Global, who started developing and selling new Nokia-branded devices from early 2017.[111][112] The total sale to both companies amounted to US$350 million. FIH Mobile is now manufacturing new Nokia-branded devices developed by HMD.[113]

Controversies[edit]
Foxconn has been involved in several controversies relating to employee grievances or treatment. Foxconn has more than a million employees.[114] In China, it employed more people than any other private company as of 2011.[55]

Working conditions[edit]
Allegations of poor working conditions have been made on several occasions. News reports highlight the long working hours,[45][46] discrimination against Mainland Chinese workers by their Taiwanese co-workers,[115] and lack of working relationships at the company.[116] Although Foxconn was found to be compliant in the majority of areas when Apple Inc. audited the maker of its iPods and iPhones in 2007,[9] the audit did substantiate several of the allegations.[117] In May 2010, Shanghaiist reported that security guards had been caught beating factory workers.[118]

In reaction to a spate of negative press, particularly that involving worker suicides in which 14 people died[119] from January to May 2010, Steve Jobs defended Apple’s relationship with the company in June 2010, citing that its Chinese partner is “pretty nice” and is “not a sweatshop”.[120] Meanwhile, however, a report jointly produced by 20 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China described Foxconn factories as labour camps[121] with widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime.

Concerns increased in early 2012 by an article published in The New York Times in October 2011.[122] It reported evidences that substantiated some of the criticisms. The 2012 audit commissioned by Apple Inc. and performed by the Fair Labor Association found that workers were routinely subjected to inhumane bouts of overtime of up to 34 hours without an increase in pay and suggested that debilitating workplace accidents and suicides may be common.[123][124] A Hong Kong non-profit organisation, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, has written numerous negative reports on Foxconn’s treatment of its employees, such as in 2010 and 2011.[125] These typically find far worse conditions than the 2012 Fair Labour Association audit did,[126] but they rely on a far smaller number of employee informants, circa 100 to 170.[127] The Fair Labor Association audit in 2012 used interviews with 35,000 Foxconn employees.[123]

In January 2012, about 150 Foxconn employees threatened to commit a mass suicide in protest of their working conditions.[128] One worker said the protest resulted from 600 workers being moved into a new “unbearable” factory location.[129] In September 2012, a fight at worker dormitories in Taiyuan, Shanxi, where a guard allegedly was beating a worker, escalated into a riot involving 2,000 people and was quelled by security.[130]

In October 2012, the company admitted that 14-year-old children had worked for a short time at a facility in Yantai, Shandong Province, as part of an internship programme,[131] in violation of the age limit of 16 for legal workers.[131] Foxconn said that the workers had been brought in to help deal with a labour shortage, and Xinhua quoted an official saying that 56 underage interns would be returned to their schools. Reuters quoted Foxconn saying that 2.7 percent of its workforce in China were long- or short-term interns. In response to the scrutiny, Foxconn said it would cut overtime from the current 20 hours per week to less than nine hours a week.[131]

Also in October 2012, there was a crisis concerning an injured worker in which 26-year-old Zhang Tingzhen[132] suffered an electric shock and fell in a factory accident[133] a year earlier. His doctors did immediate surgery to remove part of his brain,[134] “[after which] he lost his memory and can neither speak, walk”.[135] When his father attempted to get compensation in 2012,[134] Reuters reported that Foxconn told the family to transport and submit him for a disability assessment in Huizhou 70 km away, or it would cut off funding for his treatment.[132] His doctors protested the move for fear of a brain haemorrhage en route,[135] and the company stated that it was acting within labour laws.[133][136] His family later sued Foxconn in 2012 and argued in court that Tingzhen had been summoned to the wrong city.[132] In 2014, a court ruled that he had to be assessed in Huizhou to receive compensation, with Foxconn offering a settlement for the father to recant his criticisms, which was refused.[134]

In February 2015, Beijing News reported that an official with the All China Federation of Trade Union (ACFTU), Guo Jun, said that Foxconn allegedly forced employees to work overtime, resulting in occasional death by karōshi or suicide. Jun also said that the illegal overtime resulted from a lack of investigation and light punishments. Foxconn in return issued a statement questioning Guo’s allegations, arguing workers wanted to work overtime to earn more money.[137]

In November 2017, the Financial Times reported that it had found several students working 11-hour days at the iPhone X plant in Henan province, in violation of the 40-hour-per week mandate for children. In response, Foxconn announced that it has stopped the interns’ illegal overtime work at the factory in which 3,000 students had been hired that September.[138]

Since 2016, Foxconn has been replacing its workforce with robots, which have replaced 50% of Foxconn’s labour force by 2016, and there are plans for completely automating factories.[139]

In 2019, a report was issued by Taiwan News stating that some of Foxconn’s managers had fraudulently used rejected parts to build iPhones.[140]

Suicides[edit]
Suicides among Foxconn workers have attracted the media’s attention.[141] Among the first cases to attract attention in the press was the death of Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old man who committed suicide in July 2009 after reporting the loss of an iPhone 4[142] prototype in his possession.[143] According to The Telegraph, Sun Danyong had been beaten by security guards.[129]

There was also a series of suicides which were speculatively linked to low pay in 2010, though employees also noted Foxconn paid higher wages than similar jobs.[141] In reaction to a spate of worker suicides in which 14 people died in 2010,[119] Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at the base of buildings in some facilities[144] and promised to offer substantially higher wages at its Shenzhen production bases.[145] In 2011, Foxconn also hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller to help deal with the negative publicity from the suicides. That year, the nets seemed to help lower the death rate, although at least four employees died by throwing themselves off buildings.[129]

In January 2012, there was a protest by workers about conditions in Wuhan, with 150 workers threatening to commit mass suicide if factory conditions were not improved.[129] In 2012 and into 2013, three young Foxconn employees were reported to have died by jumping off buildings.[129] In January 2018, another suicide was reported by a factory worker, after 31-year old Li Ming jumped to his death off a building in Zhengzhou, where the iPhone X was being manufactured.[129]

The Wisconsin Valley Project[edit]
The project originally committed in 2017 to investing $10 billion and employing up to 13,000 workers but has now shrunk to $672 million with 1,454 jobs.