Roger Fingas
Apple's main assembly partner, Foxconn, has so far installed 40,000 production robots across China as it looks to minimize the number of people it employs, reports noted on Wednesday.
With the exception of some components like servo motors and speed reducers, the robots are being built entirely in-house, Foxconn's Dai Chia-peng told Taiwan's Central News Agency, as quoted by DigiTimes. It's unclear how many of the so-called "Foxbots" are being used to manufacture Apple products.
The machines are, however, said to be operating an industrial facility in Zhengzhou, a tablet plant in Chengdu, and computer/peripherals plants in Kunshan and Jiashan.
Dai commented that Foxconn is currently manufacturing 10,000 robots per year. Each one can potentially go far towards replacing human labor — in Kunshan alone, Foxconn is known to have cut 60,000 workers.
Until recently it was often cheaper for Chinese companies to pay thousands or millions of people low wages rather than use robots. Rising labor standards and a lack of interest from young workers, however, has led some firms to make the high upfront investment in automation.
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19 Comments
Step 1: Install robots in Foxconn factories
Step 2: Move the factories to the US
If Foxconn installed robots I predicted Apple haters would say Apple products are putting poor Chinese people out of jobs. The same Apple haters who said Chinese workers were slaves.
Fairly predictable outcome, given the overwrought reactions and hectoring, and all-around bad press from some employees committing suicide (I know, I know, even one suicide is a terrible thing; I am merely raising the empirical fact that suicide rates at Foxconn were less than in the Chinese population as a whole). The company had to put up with all manner of the Daiseys and the New York Times's of the world, as well as pesky NGOs showing up in droves with questionnaires to "audit" Foxconn's practices on behalf of the oh-so-moral-and-ethical corporations back home.
Guess what comes home to roost? Robots and unemployment.
/headshake