FIH Mobile Ltd (富智康), a handset manufacturing arm of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday said it is making mobile phones for new customer InFocus, helping the US projector brand tap the smartphone market.
It is the latest move by FIH Mobile, which was formerly named FIH International Holdings Ltd (富士康控股), to expand its customer base outside of Apple Inc to Chinese smartphone start-ups.
FIH also makes phones for Xiami Corp (小米) and Huawei Technology Co (華為).
DESIGN, MANUFACTURING
Instead of just manufacturing phones, at slim margin, FIH Mobile now “designs, develops and manufactures the phones for InFocus,” Charles Lin (林佳億), a senior director of FIH Mobile, told reporters.
FIH Mobile is also exploring new business opportunities in the Greater China region, targeting new Chinese mobile phone brands, Lin said.
SUBSIDIARY HELP
Since more than 50 percent of its components, such as camera modules, come from Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團) subsidiaries, FIH Mobile is able to make high-quality phones at affordable prices, Lin said.
Hon Hai Precision is the flagship company of Hon Hai Group.
To save on costs and time to market, FIH Mobile is now using handset chips from Qualcomm Inc and MediaTek Inc (聯發科), Lin said.
InFocus, which is shifting its business focus from the projector business to consumer products, debuted its first smartphones in Taipei yesterday before a launch in China next month.
InFocus’ goal is to become one of the top five mobile phone brands in Taiwan within two years and to make it onto China’s top 10 list within three years, InFocus chairman John Hui (許立信) told a media briefing.
The Portland-based company plans to roll out three or four new smartphones by the end of this year.
TACKLING TABLETS
InFocus also plans to enter the tablet market. The company is scheduled to launch its first tablet in October in its home market, Hui said.
The tablet will be made by Hon Hai Precision, which also makes LCD TVs for InFocus.
The newly launched IN610 and IN810 smartphones are priced at NT$11,900 and NT$13,900 per unit.
The phones, powered by Google’s Android system, are equipped with 5-inch and 6.1-inch screens from Sharp Corp, since the trend is to use screens bigger than 5-inches for phones, rather than 4.3-inch displays.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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