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Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.
(trading as Foxconn)
Company typePublic
Traded asTWSE: 2317
SEHK: 2038
LSE: HHPD
Nasdaq: HNHPF
IndustryElectronics manufacturing services
Founded1974
HeadquartersTucheng District, New Taipei, Taiwan
Area servedGlobal
Key peopleTerry Gou (Chairman and President)
ProductsVarious
RevenueUS$59.32 billion (2010)
Decrease 4.1% from 2008
Net incomeUS$2.2 billion (2010)
Increase 31.1% from 2008
Number of employees920,000+ (2010)
Websitefoxconn.com
Foxconn
Traditional Chinese鴻海精密工業股份有限公司
Simplified Chinese鸿海精密工业股份有限公司
Literal meaningHon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinHónghǎi Jīngmì Gōngyè Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàngōngsī
Trading name
Traditional Chinese富士康科技集團
Simplified Chinese富士康科技集团
Literal meaningFoxconn Technology Group
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinFùshìkāng Kējì Jítuán

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (trading as Foxconn) is a multinational electronics manufacturing company headquartered in Tucheng, New Taipei, Taiwan. It is the world's-largest maker of electronic components including printed circuit boards.

Foxconn is primarily an original design manufacturer and its clients include American, European and Japanese companies. Notable products which the company manufactures include the iPad, iPhone, Kindle, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. It is the largest exporter in Greater China and the largest private-sector employer in China.

Foxconn has been involved in several controversies, mostly relating to how it manages employees in China, where it is the largest private employer.

History

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. was founded in 1974 as a manufacturer of electrical components (notably electrical connectors for computer components, which found use in the Atari 2600). Foxconn originated as a trade name of Hon Hai, later becoming a Hon Hai subsidiary. In 2001 Intel concentrated on its core competency of chip making and began using Chinese contract manufacturers such as Foxconn to make Intel-branded motherboards. Hon Hai's first manufacturing plant in mainland China opened in Longhua, Shenzhen, in 1988. In November 2007 Foxconn announced plans to build a new US$500 million plant in Huizhou, southern China.

Operations

Foxconn currently has factories in Asia, Europe and Latin America, which together assemble around 40 percent of consumer electronics products in the world.

China

Workers at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen

Foxconn has 13 factories in nine Chinese cities, more than in any other country.

Foxconn's largest factory worldwide is in Longhua, Shenzhen, where hundreds of thousands of workers (varying counts include 230,000, 300,000, and 450,000) are employed at the Longhua Science & Technology Park, a walled campus sometimes referred to as "Foxconn City" or "iPod City". Covering about 1.16 square miles (3 square km), it includes 15 factories, worker dormitories, a swimming pool, a fire brigade, its own television network (Foxconn TV), and a downtown complete with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, bookstore, and hospital. While some workers live in surrounding towns and villages, others live and work inside the complex; a quarter of the employees live in the dormitories, and many of them work 12-hour days for 6 days each week.

Foxconn continues to expand and planned factory sites include at Chengdu in Sichuan province, Wuhan in Hubei province, and Zhengzhou in Henan province.

Apple contracts with Chinese industry such as Foxconn because it has easy access to the Chinese supply chain within a well developed industrial cluster. In addition, employees at overseas companies are thought to be more flexible, diligent, and skilled than American workers.

Brazil

All existing and currently planned company facilities in South America are located in Brazil, including mobile-phone factories in Manaus and Indaiatuba as well as production bases in Jundiai, Sorocaba, and Santa Rita do Sapucaí. The company is considering more investments in Brazil.

Europe

A Foxconn factory in the Czech Republic

Foxconn currently has factories in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It is the second-largest exporter in the Czech Republic.

India

Foxconn has an operation in the Special Economic Zone of Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Malaysia

As of late 2011, Foxconn has at least one facility in this nation, possibily in Kulaijaya, Johor, as the company is developing an industrial park in that area which will include four factories when fully completed.

Mexico

Foxconn has a facility in San Jerónimo, Chihuahua which assembles computers, and two facilities in Juárez – a former Motorola production base which manufactures mobile phones, and a set-top box factory acquired from Cisco Systems. LCD televisions are also made in the country by Foxconn.

Major customers

Foxconn manufactures products for companies including:

(country of headquarters in parentheses)

Controversies

Allegations of poor working conditions

Allegations of poor working conditions have been made on a number of occasions. News reports highlight the long working hours, discrimination against mainland Chinese workers by their Taiwanese co-workers, and lack of working relationships at the company. Although Foxconn was found to be compliant in the majority of areas when Apple audited the maker of its iPods and iPhones, the audit did substantiate a few of the allegations.

In January 2012, Mike Daisey and Nicholas Kristof appeared on This American Life detailing their first-hand experiences at Foxconn. For example, they noted that some amount of child labor was found, and that companies maintain "blacklists" of "troublemakers", workers who demand overtime pay. Daisey estimated that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage. Also, N-hexane, a solvent and neurotoxin , was used as a screen cleaning material since it evaporates faster than alcohol. Kristof made the point in the interview that even such factories have made a tremendous positive economic difference for the people of the local area, saying it had been just a poor rice paddy economy before and now it's high tech factories where people can make more money consistently despite the working conditions. He had made this same point in a 2000 New York Times article.

Suicides

Main article: Foxconn suicides

Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old male, committed suicide in July 2009 after reporting the loss of an iPhone 4 prototype in his possession.

In reaction to a spate of worker suicides where fourteen died in 2010, a report by twenty Chinese universities described Foxconn factories as labour camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime. In response to the suicides, Foxconn installed suicide-prevention netting at some facilities, and it promised to offer substantially higher wages at its Shenzhen production bases. Workers were also forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they and their descendants would not sue the company as a result of unexpected death, self-injury, or suicide.

Protests

In January 2012, 150 workers in Wuhan threatened to commit mass suicide because of worsening work conditions. The employees had asked for a raise but were told they could either quit with compensation or keep their jobs with no raise. The employees quit, but did not receive their compensation.

See also

References

This article uses bare URLs, which are uninformative and vulnerable to link rot. Please consider converting them to full citations to ensure the article remains verifiable and maintains a consistent citation style. Several templates and tools are available to assist in formatting, such as reFill (documentation) and Citation bot (documentation). (January 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
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  4. Buetow, Mike (March 2010). "The Trials of 2009". circuitsassembly.com.
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Further reading

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