Foxconn quietly assembles much of the world's electronics
You may never have bought anything branded Foxconn, but you have probably owned something it made. The Taiwanese contract manufacturer has built iPhones, Kindles, PlayStations, every Nintendo console since the GameCube and every Xbox after the first. By 2012 its factories turned out an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide.
Terry Gou founded the company, formally Hon Hai Precision Industry, in Taipei in 1974 to make electrical components. It opened its first mainland Chinese plant in Longhua, Shenzhen, in 1988, and a turning point came in 2001, when Intel picked it over Asus to build Intel-branded motherboards. Circuits Assembly magazine has ranked it the largest electronics manufacturing services firm for 14 years in a row, and in 2023 it placed 20th on the Fortune Global 500.
Its Longhua site, nicknamed Foxconn City, is a walled campus of about 3 square kilometres with 15 factories, dormitories, four swimming pools, a hospital, a fire brigade and its own television channel. Estimates of its workforce range from 230,000 to 450,000. A second complex in Zhengzhou makes most iPhones and is known as iPhone City. In late 2022 strict COVID controls there led workers to climb the fences to leave, and later to clash with police over lockdown rules and unpaid bonuses.
Gou was known for dramatic gestures. When Foxconn's board balked at buying Sharp in 2016 after hidden liabilities surfaced, he wrote the Chinese character for righteousness on a whiteboard and insisted the company keep its word; the deal closed at a lower price. Foxconn has also replaced tens of thousands of workers with automation and helped buy COVID vaccines for Taiwan.
Gou retired in 2019, handing over to Young Liu, head of the semiconductor group. The company is now pushing into chips, electric cars and India, where it builds iPhones near Chennai.
Source: Foxconn
