Apple Courts Product: – This is a once-in-a-hundred-year business opportunity

When Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, was appointed by founder Steve Jobs in the late 1990s, one of the first things he did was shut down Apple’s own factories. Looking towards Asia. Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) got the job and in 2021 had 1.3 million employees.

Foxconn doesn’t just produce Apple’s iPhone models. Sony and Microsoft game consoles, Amazon reading discs and computers from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer are among the products produced at the company’s factories, which until recently were mainly located in China.

hairy ambitions

The company is now beginning mass production of electric vehicles at plants in Taiwan, Thailand and the US state of Ohio. The first car models were shown during the annual technology conference on Tuesday.

Foxconn has captured between 40 and 45 percent of the global market for electronic contracts for smartphones and computers.

– I hope we can achieve the same here as we did in the IT industry, CEO Yong Liu told reporters.

The goal is to have a five percent market share by 2025. After that, expansion will accelerate.

– Under the current situation, it seems that we can achieve this goal. “We’ve developed five different models in the past 24 months to show current and future customers that we can develop and build electric cars that look good and are safe,” Liu said.

In the long term, the goal is for nearly half of the electric vehicles sold in the world to be produced by Foxconn.

Taiwanese electric vehicle manufacturer Yulon is the first major customer and mass production is taking place. American Lordstown Motors will receive Foxconn pickups.

Foxconn will not sell its own models. I hope one day we can build Tesla cars for Tesla, said Liu.

– The way we do it

Foxconn has built a global alliance with subcontractors – similar to what has been done with the electronics sector. The MIH Consortium will be an open ecosystem that will develop standards for design and development, facilitating increased collaboration.

Our experience and expertise in managing complex supply chains gives us an advantage in developing new models faster than our competitors. Supply chains have always been Foxconn’s DNA. We have a presence in 24 countries. “It gives us a huge advantage,” said Liu.

The consortium has about 2,500 members – everything from high-tech companies like Arm and Microsoft to plastic manufacturers, battery companies and raw material suppliers.

When we first announced plans to build electric cars in 2020, many asked whether Foxconn could build cars. We developed three models in one year. Now we have five. That’s how we do it, said Leo.

He said the strategies were not affected by either the pandemic or the challenges of the war in Europe.

Unique Business Opportunity

Smartphone sales fell nine percent in the third quarter, according to analysis firm Canalys. Apple was the only company among the top five that managed to increase its market share – by three percentage points, to a market share of 18 percent.

This is a business opportunity that appears once every hundred years, as the Foxconn president said about the opportunities in the electric vehicle market and how this could mean huge opportunities for the Taiwanese economy.(Conditions)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using links that lead directly to our pages. All or part of the Content may not be copied or otherwise used with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look here.