Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, is expected to forge deeper and more comprehensive collaborations with its main customer Apple Inc, the company’s chairman said on Tuesday.
Speaking before a dinner banquet on Tuesday to mark the company’s 50th anniversary, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said that the two companies would forge a deeper and more extensive partnership.
“Everything that should be there will be there and nothing will be missed,” Liu said, when asked about the progress made in Hon Hai’s collaborations with Apple in the artificial intelligence and electric vehicle (EV) fields.
Photo: Chang I-hwa, Bloomberg
Hon Hai is the largest assembler for Apple. In addition to iPhone, it makes other Apple products, such as iPads, MacBooks, AirPods and Apple Watches. It gets more than half of its business from Apple.
Liu said that aside from Apple, several of Hon Hai’s international partners also dispatched representatives to the banquet, including its other main customers HP, Dell, Cisco, processor and chip makers Intel, NVIDIA, AMD and Arm, and automotive chipmaker NXP.
Asked about Hon Hai’s plans to expand its footprint overseas, Liu said that it is continuing its collaboration with India’s HCL Group in semiconductor outsourced assembly and testing (OSAT) development in the South Asian nation, and is in negotiations with the local government on issues regarding subsidizing semiconductor manufacturing.
Construction of an EV factory in Thailand has almost been completed and Hon Hai will determine when to begin taking orders depending on future market development, Liu said.
Asked about Hon Hai’s plan to set up a joint-venture company to build and operate a new 12-inch wafer fab in Malaysia, Liu said that a worldwide chip shortage has prompted chipmakers in many countries to accelerate building new factories to increase manufacturing capacity.
However, as upstream supply relies heavily on downstream demand, Liu said Hon Hai would decide whether to go ahead with a Malaysian wafer fab by observing downstream demand.
“Does the world need so many fabs?” Liu said.
Liu added that Hon Hai was not sure yet and would continue to pay attention to the issue.
PATENTS: MediaTek Inc said it would not comment on ongoing legal cases, but does not expect the legal action by Huawei to affect its business operations Smartphone integrated chips designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) on Friday said that a lawsuit filed by Chinese smartphone brand Huawei Technologies Co (華為) over alleged patent infringements would have little impact on its operations. In an announcement posted on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, MediaTek said that it would not comment on an ongoing legal case. However, the company said that Huawei’s legal action would have little impact on its operations. MediaTek’s statement came after China-based PRIP Research said on Thursday that Huawei filed a lawsuit with a Chinese district court claiming that MediaTek infringed on its patents. The infringement mentioned in the lawsuit likely involved
Taipei is today suspending work, classes and its US$2.4 trillion stock market as Typhoon Gaemi approaches Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rain. The nation is not conducting securities, currency or fixed income trading, statements from its stock and currency exchanges said. Authorities had yesterday issued a warning that the storm could affect people on land and canceled some ship crossings and domestic flights. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) expects its local chipmaking fabs to maintain normal production, the company said in an e-mailed statement. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp said it has activated routine typhoon alert
GROWTH: TSMC increased its projected revenue growth for this year to more than 25 percent, citing stronger-than-expected demand for AI devices and smartphones The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) yesterday raised its forecast for Taiwan’s GDP growth this year from 3.29 percent to 3.85 percent, as exports and private investment recovered faster than it predicted three months ago. The Taipei-based think tank also expects that Taiwan would see a 8.19 percent increase in exports this year, better than the 7.55 percent it projected in April, as US technology giants spent more money on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and development. “There will be more AI servers going forward, but it remains to be seen if the momentum would extend to personal computers, smartphones and
Catastrophic computer outages caused by a software update from one company have once again exposed the dangers of global technological dependence on a handful of players, experts said on Friday. A flawed update sent out by the little-known security firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc brought airlines, TV stations and myriad other aspects of daily life to a standstill. The outages affected companies or individuals that use CrowdStrike on the Microsoft Inc’s Windows platform. When they applied the update, the incompatible software crashed computers into a frozen state known as the “blue screen of death.” “Today CrowdStrike has become a household name, but not in