Taiwanese pioneer of contract electronics manufacturing. The company was instrumental in training China's vast but largely unskilled labour force in the 1990s. Its founder, Terry Gou, is credited with being a deft political operator who persuaded local governments in China to provide big subsidies, allowing Foxconn to buy the world's best machinery for its Chinese factories and giving them an edge over rivals.
Foxconn became Apple's principal manufacturer, producing first the iPod and then the iPhone. The low costs of Foxconn's Chinese operations forced competitors to move to China too, until it became too expensive to manufacture electronics anywhere else. Critics said conditions at Foxconn were inhumane; several workers committed suicide.
Foxconn has two plants in Shanxi province, once the hope for broadening that coal-dependent region's industrial base. Shifting supply chains have hit them hard as America has rapidly cut its share of smartphone imports from China.
Foxconn is Apple's biggest supplier and now assembles nearly one in five of its iPhones in India, pledging $1.5bn to expand its Indian operations.
Robots that were previously used by Foxconn to put the circular "home" button on earlier generations of iPhones were repurposed to install microchips—an example of how software-driven reprogramming has improved the lifetime return on investment in industrial robots.
Foxconn is building fully robotic factories in America, run via AI-created simulations ("digital twins") using Nvidia technology. The factories are part of a broader effort to shift manufacturing away from China. Some will eventually produce AI-powered robots—humanoid and otherwise—to offset American labour shortages.
In 2025 Foxconn withdrew more than 300 Chinese engineers from India, apparently part of a co-ordinated Chinese effort to slow alternative supply chains. Restricted flows of Chinese machine tools and dysprosium, a rare-earth element, have slowed Indian production of iPhones and AirPods.
Sources: The Economist, May 21st 2025; June 14th 2025; August 14th 2025
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