Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) may spend US$12 billion over five to six years to expand production in her country, in what would be the Taiwanese company’s biggest investment overseas.
The maker of Apple Inc’s iPhone and Dell Inc computers is holding talks with the government, Rousseff told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday. Foxconn is giving “serious consideration” to further investment in the country and has yet to decide on the details, said Louis Woo (胡國輝), a spokesman for the Taipei-based company, declining to comment on the value.
“It makes sense to move to Brazil, but that figure is too much,” said Vincent Chen (陳豊丰), an analyst at Yuanta Securities Co (元大證券). “The main reasons to go there are for tariff considerations and [to] be closer to emerging markets.”
Photo: Reuters
The amount is likely an exaggeration, Chen said.
The expansion may help the Taiwanese company, which employs more than 1 million people in China, scale back the reliance on its manufacturing base in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, where wages are climbing.
LG Electronics Inc and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc have also announced plans to manufacture in South America’s largest economy.
Foxconn, whose Brazilian facilities produce notebooks for Hewlett-Packard Co, would make the investments in order to follow customers and give it “market access,” Woo said. He declined to comment on what products the company would make there.
Shares of Foxconn’s Taipei-based flagship Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) climbed 1 percent to close at NT$106.50 in Taipei, while the benchmark TAIEX added 0.55 percent.
Foxconn’s proposed facility could create 100,000 jobs, Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology Aloizio Mercadante said in Beijing. Foxconn is seeking state infrastructure guarantees such as energy supply, broadband Internet and access to airports, he said.
The plant would produce tablets, Mercadante said.
LG, the world’s third-biggest handset maker, plans to start production of its Optimus Pad in Taubate, Sao Paulo state, by the second half of this year, according to Mariana Geraldine, a spokesman for the company.
Motorola Mobility plans to take advantage of tax breaks in Brazil to produce its Xoom tablets at a factory in Jaguariuna, also in Sao Paulo state. It’s waiting for details on the incentives, Motorola said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.
Brazil plans to give tax incentives to manufacturers of tablets to make Latin America’s biggest economy a production center, according to Brazilian Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Minister Fernando Pimentel.
The government also plans to give tablets to students at public schools to modernize Brazil’s education system.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained