At first I thought the birds in the trees at the Foxconn’s largest plant in Shenzhen, China were fake. They sang so sweetly that I was sure my hosts had planted speakers for my benefit – a sort of Potemkin aviary high in the branches.
The plant, called Foxconn City, is one of Foxconn’s 26 major and minor factories around the world. Built by founder Terry Guo in 1974, the City was the first of… → Read More
Just two weeks ago it was reported that the relationship between Foxconn and Brazil regarding the proposed $12 billion production center there was on the rocks. Foxconn was making demands the government felt were overreaching, and negotiations were stalled.
Government officials and Foxconn representatives announced today that the plan was still underway, and the plant is ready to pump out… → Read More
Earlier this year it was reported that Foxconn had decided it was going to try to diversity its global holdings by establishing an iPad factory in Brazil. Their reasoning seemed fine: the economy is expanding, there’s a tech-savvy populace, and the government, they figured, would be game for few little sweetheart deals to get the ball rolling. As it turns out, not so much.
“The project for a… → Read More
It’s happened again: a Foxconn plant explosion has caused a large fire in Yantai. According to MICGadget the fire stemmed from “improper operation of workmanship on color spraying” which suggests a aerosol paint may be involved.
The last fire happened in May in Chengdu. This fire was at a plant that made PCs, laptops, and printers. It employs and, in some cases, houses 80,000 workers, many of… → Read More
Foxconn is planning on replacing many of it’s hard-working human manufacturers with about 1 million robots, a number that, if you think about it, is a very telling comment on the current state of electronics manufacturing.
There are apparently 10,000 robots at the factory now and that number will increase by 300,000 next year. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou plans another million robots by 2014. The… → Read More
A Foxconn employee, Chen Long, died of exhaustion after working a continuous 60-hour shift in one week, stopping rarely to sleep and eat. The employee, who had previously fainted from exhaustion, died in a shower on June 24th.
Here is a rundown by MICGadget:
On June 24th, the day before Chen’s death, everything is normal. Chen got off work at 7pm, and went home for dinner. After having his… → Read More
UPDATED – What appears to be a fire or explosion engulfed one of the buildings at the Foxconn Factory in Chengdu, China. Foxconn is reporting two casualties and 16 hurt and the damage does look severe and quite thorough. MICGadget reported that “10 fire engines, ambulances and 10 police cars” arrived on the scene. Reports state that a few floors in Building A5 (apparently part of the iPad 2… → Read More
A few months ago the Internet was aflame with suicides at Foxconn and then there were rumors that the massive manufacturing company was forcing its employees to sign “anti-suicide” pledges. Now, at least according to a Canadian news organization, Foxconn has confirmed that this is not true. “Foxconn does not ask its employees to sign any such documents, any reports to the… → Read More
Ancient Chinese proverb says, “Man who goes against Apple will lose his right to eat any fruit ever again.” Digitimes is reporting through Chinese-language sznews.com that three employees were arrested by local police on December 26, 2010 and eventually charged on March 23, 2011 for violating the company’s trade secrets. Reportedly these employees leaked the iPad 2′s design to accessory makers. → Read More
My favorite blogger, Joel Johnson, took a supervised trip to Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen, China last year and has finally gathered his reporting into an excellent piece in this month’s wired. His mission?
Still, after years of writing what is (at best) buyers’ guidance and (at worst) marching hymns for an army of consumers, I was burdened by what felt like an outsize provision of… → Read More
I present to you, friends, unadulterated, the horrors witnessed by French journalist Jordan Pouille and recorded in his video, “Inside the Foxconn Prison,” are truly manifold. In what will soon be the The Jungle of its day, Pouille’s video of Chinese factory workers living their oppressed lives while shopping for food, listening to pop music, and meeting for lunch reminds us that… → Read More
Our good buddy Joel Johnson went inside Foxconn’s 540,000 employee factory in Shenzhen. There are 950,000+ employees in China alone. To put that into perspective, Columbus, Ohio, my hometown, is home to 711,470 people. → Read More
Ah, capitalism. It looks like the value of manufacturing in China is slowly going down as companies like Foxconn are forced to treat employees like human beings. What does that mean? It means your next iPhone will be a bit pricier. → Read More
It’s not every day you get to look inside a major electronics factory. Most of the work done there is compartmentalized and the manufacturing done for one company never touches the manufacturing done for another. In fact, Foxconn’s R&D labs consist of a series of locked doors. You can only get into one and that’s only if you’re allowed in to see prototypes. It’s an amazing world of secrecy and… → Read More
Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronic components manufacturer that makes products like certain Dell computers and Apple‘s iPad and iPhone devices, was – as widely reported – hit by a string of suicides among its workers earlier this year.
Apparently, this hasn’t had much effect on their growth rate (surprise): according to Bloomberg, the company plans to hire as many as 400,000 workers in China in… → Read More
A pair of reports from Reuters today spell out some of the latest moves that electronics manufacturer Foxconn has made in response to a tragic wave of suicides at its largest Chinese factory. The spate of suicides has brought heat against both the manufacturer and its clients, which include Apple.
First, Reuters reports that according to Chinese news agency Xinhua, posters have appeared at… → Read More
Foxconn employees, with the help of Apple, will receive a 66 percent raise. The increase will raise the average salary from $132 a month to about $292, an impressive number. There is a required performance review period for three months before the raises will be doled out. → Read More
Hon Hai Precision Industry, the anchor group for Foxconn, is offering its workers a 20% increase in pay as part of a regular third-quarter cycle. It’s important to note that this is a cyclical was planned months in advance the suicides are ancillary to the eleven suicides thus far. → Read More
A cluster of suicides has hit Foxconn, painting the factory in a horrible light and essentially drawing outrage just about everyone. Yesterday Foxconn CEO, Gou Tai-ming, officially spoke out against the suicides and today another potential suicide occurred at about 6:30 AM in Shenzhen. Those are the facts and it’s a tragic situation. Something in the factory is wrong and Foxconn needs to fix… → Read More
I’ve been interested in gadget manufacturing for a while now and, as I reported a few months ago, things are pretty bad but they’ve been worse. Now, however, we’re seeing clusters of suicides at Foxconn as well as an undercover “report” from Foxconn’s “Hell Factory.” I’m calling bull. First, consider that Foxconn has 400,000 employees in… → Read More
Buried in a Reuters report on Foxconn, a division of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, is a description of an attack on a journalist visiting a Foxconn factory in China while chasing down a lead on an Apple product. The journalist was taking pictures of the factory from a public road, he says, when two guards attacked him and tried to drag him into the factory: → Read More
Buried in a Reuters report on Foxconn, a division of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, is a description of an attack on a journalist visiting a Foxconn factory in China while chasing down a lead on an Apple product. The journalist was taking pictures of the factory from a public road, he says, when two guards attacked him and tried to drag him into the factory: → Read More
This is probably the last piece of the puzzle concerning the iPhone suicide incident. The NYT is stating that Foxconn gave the man’s family more than $44,000 and his girlfriend got an Apple notebook. That’s all, folks. Come up with your own conclusions and/or morbid jokes. This sad event makes us sick. → Read More
First, we all need to shut up because we don’t know the facts. When (if) more is revealed, then we can talk about it with confidence, anything less is sensationalism — not that we’re any strangers to that. But argument from ignorance is an insult to everyone involved. Second, we need to shut up because it has nothing to do with Apple, or Foxconn for that matter. It has to do with big… → Read More
Every once in a while you get a story so strange and horrible that it takes a while to sink in. I’m talking about the suicide of a Foxconn employee who was caught doing something with an “iPhone prototype” and jumped out of the window. Matt wrote: So the story goes that a 25-year-old man at Foxconn – where iPhones are born – was to send 16 iPhone prototypes to Apple… → Read More
So the story goes that a 25-year-old man at Foxconn – where iPhones are born – was to send 16 iPhone prototypes to Apple, but one was lost somewhere. The Foxconn security department then proceeded to illegally search the man’s apartment and interrogated him. But that was too much for the man that might be responsible for leaking a prototype of the next iPhone.
Update after the jump → Read More
Attempting to quell earlier reports that they’ve signed an agreement with Sony to build the rumored PS3 Slim, Foxconn issued an official “no comment” statement with the Taiwan Stock Exchange today. → Read More
IDG is reporting that Foxconn, the largest contract electronics maker in the world (they make almost everything you own. Seriously), is working with IBM to modernize factories in China. They’re planning on spending a “few billion” on new technologies including LED lighting and solar panels. → Read More
Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant that produces the iPhone 3G for Apple, has ramped up production to 800,000 units per week, says a source close to Apple with direct knowledge of the numbers. This is “above current full capacity” and there may be some concerns with quality control. Apple sold just 6 million of its first generation iPhones. Foxconn factories will be able to ramp… → Read More
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