Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) yesterday mapped out the company’s corporate transformation plan, with an initial focus on developing industrial Internet-focused technologies and then growing Internet-based “smart” healthcare and security solutions.
“The public continues to see Hon Hai as a contract electronics maker... We are transforming from a traditional hardware manufacturing firm into a company that provides platforms and solutions,” Gou told a provisional shareholders’ meeting at the company’s headquarters in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城).
Shareholders approved Hon Hai’s proposal to seek an initial public offering (IPO) for its newly established subsidiary, Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd (FII, 富士康工業互聯網), on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Photo: CNA
About 10 percent of Shenzhen, China-based FII’s shares are to be converted to floating stock, and Hon Hai will maintain an about 85 percent stake, Hon Hai said.
The pricing and timeline of FII’s IPO have not yet been determined, it added.
FII, which has a paid-in capital of 17.72 billion yuan (US$2.82 billion), is to collect, process and analyze industrial data generated by Hon Hai’s more than 1 million employees and millions of pieces of equipment worldwide every day, Gou said.
Hon Hai’s massive supply of industrial data is the foundation for the development of artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine communication and deep learning for “smart” manufacturing, he said.
The firm’s factories that run around the clock rely heavily on industrial Internet-driven technologies, which helped raise its production efficiency by 30 percent and pushed its production yield to nearly 99 percent, Gou said.
FII is to open up Hon Hai’s industrial data to small and medium-sized enterprises to help them implement corporate transformations, he said.
Hon Hai is to set up industrial Internet-focused and artificial intelligence research and development centers in Taiwan, Japan, the US and China to explore more applications for the technologies, Gou said, adding that it would hold a news conference tomorrow in Taipei to provide more details.
The company also plans to increase the number of robots it has deployed in manufacturing from 60,000 to 200,000 over the next few years, Hon Hai said.
In the second phase of Hon Hai’s long-term operating strategy, the firm is to focus on the development of healthcare solutions, including precision medicine, based on big data-driven technologies, Gou said, adding that a healthcare-focused subsidiary would be established in two years.
The next step would be to develop Internet-based security solutions to protect data flow in the healthcare, industrial and financial sectors, including blockchain technology for Hon Hai’s massive supply chains, he said.
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