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.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort