Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (鴻海精密) yesterday said it plans to expand a recruitment program by hiring as many as 3,000 workers to support the development of new devices based on Mozilla’s Firefox operating system.
The scale of hiring is bigger than the company’s announcement on June 4, when it said it would hire between 500 and 1,000 engineers by the end of this year for its software center in Greater Kaohsiung to develop Firefox OS applications.
The center currently has 300 employees.
“Hon Hai will do its best to develop the Kaohsiung software center as the company’s software powerhouse,” the firm said in a statement. “There will be no budget limit for fostering software talent.”
Hon Hai, which is a major assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads, is scheduled to participate in a job fair tomorrow organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The company plans to develop more than five devices running on Firefox OS, including smartphones and tablets, by the end of the year, which the company said is part of its efforts to provide customers with new products powered by alternative, open-source software.
The operating system will allow HTML5 apps to communicate directly with the hardware and it is being developed by Mozilla as an open-source mobile operating system.
Hon Hai has said that it hopes the platform would become another option for clients aside from Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
However, UBS Securities analyst Arthur Hsieh (謝宗文) said in a note on Wednesday that it would take time for Hon Hai and Mozilla to make Firefox devices attractive.
Hon Hai shares fell 1.81 percent to NT$70.7 yesterday.
Additional reporting by AFP
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS