When it comes to electronics industry, we Taiwanese are proud of Foxconn and HTC. Nevertheless, they are very different from each other. Today, I would like to just address some points about Foxconn.
Foxconn is funded by Guo, Tai-ming in Taipei, Taiwan in 1974. In the beginning, the company only manufactures plastic products, in 1981, the company changes the direction into electronic components, in 1988, Guo sets up the first factory in Guangzhou, the province of the southern China and in the end of 2010, Foxconn climbs up to Top 50 companies around the world.
In Wikipedia, Foxconn “ is the world's largest maker of electronics components and the largest exporter in Mainland China.” In 2008, it occupies 3.9% of China’s exporting. Furthermore, it has factories in Asia (China, Malaysia and India), Europe (Hungry, Slovakia and Czech Republic) and Latin America (Mexico and Brazil), which together assemble around 40 percent of consumer electronics products in the world. The influence of Foxcoon for the economy growth of these countries cannot be underestimated.
Customers worldwide may not be familiar with the brand of Foxconn. But you must be with Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson or ZTE. Foxconn is the largest OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for these products. It is interesting to realize how small the global village is- the Taiwanese company builds up a factory in China to manufacture the American band smart phones!
Unlike Samsung to South Korea (which occupies 22% GDP), Foxconn frankly does not bring the economy booming that much to Taiwan. Yes, it is a Taiwanese company and the headquarter is located in Taipei. With only 5,000 employees in Taiwan, Taiwanese cannot feel the prosperity that Foxconn enjoys around the world. On the other hand, in China, there are plenty Foxconn factories and more than 1 MILLION employees working for Foxconn! (Just imagine more than 1/5 Finns in Finland work for Nokia) Therefore, Foxconn helps China tremendously grow instead of Taiwan. In other words, I would say Guo,Tai-ming builds his own “kingdom” in China, where Taiwan could not share together.
Things could get worse- several employee suicide events happened in the factories of China. The media later debunked that the employees were badly treated, which led to poor health and even the danger to their lives. Duo to the lack of the decent communication, the reputation of Apple was affected, since some people called i-phone the products of "blood and sweat". Ever since then, in 2012, the Fair Labor Association was hired by Apple to audit working conditions at Foxconn.
Nowadays, Foxconn obviously is not confined in such a small island like Taiwan, but belongs to the global stage. Hence, how the company sees a big picture to grow, to maintain and to manage is not only involved with 1 million employees in China but also the big companies like Apple.
Comments
Chloe, great digital storytelling from you again. I guess KK-Net readers are curiouus to learn new things about HTC as well.