Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry): global electronics contract manufacturer

Foxconn is one of the world's largest manufacturers of electronics and computer parts. As a contract manufacturer, the company produces for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, among others. The group produces or produced on behalf of the game consoles NintendoDS, Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation.

Foxconn is also considered an in-house supplier for Intel. About 75% of the motherboards sold under the Intel name are manufactured by Foxconn. With 42 million motherboards and more than 52 million PC cases sold in 2005, Foxconn is the world market leader. Globally, Foxconn is the No.1 manufacturer of processor sockets, No.5 manufacturer of connectors and No.2 manufacturer of heat sinks with 25% market share. In 2016, Foxconn generated $135 billion in revenue. This makes it the largest privately held manufacturing company from Taiwan. At the same time, Foxconn is China's largest exporter with the highest unit shipments.

Since 2005, Foxconn has been trying to expand its business with offerings for the private user. These products include, for example, motherboards, barebones, graphics cards, power supplies and fans. In Europe these are offered under the Foxconn brand, in Asia as WinFast. The model names and designs are usually identical. Another brand of the group is Leadtek, which means that the group is also represented in the graphics card segment. According to its own information, Foxconn holds about 21,000 patents and involves more than 15,000 engineers in the USA, China and Taiwan in the development of new products.

In China, Foxconn also tried to gain a foothold in electronics retailing together with the electronics retail chain Media-Saturn, which was part of the Metro Group. The first Media Markt store in China was opened as a joint venture between the two companies under the name Wan De Cheng (萬得城 / 万得城, Wàndéchéng) on 17 November 2010 in Shanghai. Further openings were planned but by the end of April 2013 all stores had been closed again.

Employee development

Foxconn is one of the world's largest private employers in terms of revenue and employees. The number of employees has fluctuated greatly over the years.

The BBC reported in May 2016 that Foxconn had laid off up to 60,000 workers in favor of automated manufacturing facilities since 2014. The company later confirmed these figures.

Since 1993, the company has had production facilities in mainland China, including Shenzhen, Kunshan, Wuhan and Yantai. In 1994, development centers were added in the USA and Japan, and from 1998 to 2000 production facilities were added in Great Britain, the USA and in Pardubice in the Czech Republic, which is centrally located in Europe.

In addition to the plant opened in 2000 in Pardubice, where PCs are final manufactured, the company has had another plant in the Czech Republic since 2010 in Kutna Hora, where servers are manufactured. In total, Foxconn employs around 5,000 people in the Czech Republic (2015).

In 2010, Foxconn took over Sony's Slovakian subsidiary and since then has been operating a plant in Nitra, opened in 2007, with 1,200 employees, producing around 3 million LC displays annually.