Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday said 635 companies have so far joined its open electric-vehicle (EV) development platform, which provides hardware and software to other automakers.
Participants in the MIH Open Platform are to start supplying products by the end of April, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said at an online weiya (尾牙) year-end event for the company’s employees.
The firm has been pushing its “three plus three” plan to expand from manufacturing into hardware and software integration, he said.
Photo: CNA
The initiatives refer to three emerging industries — electric vehicles, robotics and digital healthcare — that are being developed through artificial intelligence, semiconductors and communications technologies.
The development of electric vehicles is central to that initiative, and the aim is to build a supply chain for the industry, Liu said.
Hon Hai employees in more than 20 countries, including Taiwan, Brazil, the Czech Republic, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Slovakia, the US and Vietnam, joined the weiya, the company said.
Separately on Thursday, Hon Hai, a key Apple Inc supplier, reported consolidated sales of NT$500.22 billion (US$17.62 billion) for last month, the company’s highest January sales, on the back of robust Apple iPhone 12 sales.
Last month’s figure rose 37.21 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a statement.
Hon Hai’s consumer electronics division posted the strongest growth, followed by the electronics component division, the computer division and the cloud-related device division, it said.
However, sales were down 29.92 percent from December last year, when consolidated sales of NT$713.78 billion exceeded NT$700 billion for the first time in any month since the company was founded.
Neither Hon Hai nor analysts identified specific products or subsidiaries to account for the nearly 30 percent drop.
However, it said in the statement that its cloud-related gadget division fared the best last month, followed by the computer division and electronic components division, with the consumer electronics division seeing the biggest monthly decline.
Meanwhile, FIH Mobile Ltd (富智康), a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Hon Hai, reported a net loss of US$175 million for last year, worsening from its net loss of US$12.18 million the previous year.
FIH Mobile manufactures products for non-Apple brands, such as Xiaomi Corp (小米), Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀), Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Japan’s Sharp Corp, and has a broad production base in China.
As Hon Hai holds about a 62.8 percent stake in FIH Mobile, the unit’s losses are expected to hurt the parent company’s bottom line, analysts said.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai