Foxconn claims it can make all of Apple's iPhones outside China

Foxconn has told investors that it has the capacity to produce iPhones for the American market without using its Chinese facilities, potentially skirting possible US/China trade tariffs.

Specifically, a senior executive says that Foxconn can make enough iPhones to supply the entire US market and do so out in territories that would avoid incurring any US/China tariffs.

According to Bloomberg, Young Liu, semiconductor division chief at Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, was speaking at an investor briefing in Taipei.

"Twenty-five percent of our production capacity is outside of China," he said, "and we can help Apple respond to its needs in the US market. We have enough capacity to meet Apple's demand."

Liu confirmed that Apple has not requested such a move yet, nor did he detail which Foxconn facilities might be used after such a move. He was telling investors that Foxconn is able to move quickly and change its use of facilities in different countries to avoid such trade wars.

Foxconn has previously been investigating moving iPhone production to India and to Vietnam.

Bloomberg says that Liu gave Foxconn's decision to build a base in Wisconsin as an example of its worldwide production capability. That operation has been controversially delayed and changed but other company executives reportedly reaffirmed Foxconn's commitment to the US state.

It plans to hire up to 2,000 people by the end of 2020, though this is is substantially fewer than the 13,000 originally promised.

41 Comments

trashman69 161 comments · 9 Years

About 5 years ago

Impressive and Awesome.

ksec 1502 comments · 18 Years

Worth doing some numbers.

Apple roughly ships 200M iPhone, 100M of those are not the latest, i.e iPhone 8 and below. Foxconn in India already has the ability to assemble those phones if and when needed. It is only a matter of scale.

US has roughly 30% of Apple's revenue, so assuming in perfect scale ( which won't be the case but for the sake of numbers ), Foxconn will need to assemble 15M older generation iPhone and 15M latest iPhone outside of China.

crosslad 527 comments · 11 Years

ksec said:

Worth doing some numbers.

Apple roughly ships 200M iPhone, 100M of those are not the latest, i.e iPhone 8 and below. Foxconn in India already has the ability to assemble those phones if and when needed. It is only a matter of scale.

US has roughly 30% of Apple's revenue, so assuming in perfect scale ( which won't be the case but for the sake of numbers ), Foxconn will need to assemble 15M older generation iPhone and 15M latest iPhone outside of China.

I think you need to change your last figures to 30M of each phone.

GeorgeBMac 11421 comments · 8 Years

Amazing the power of propaganda to, in short order, and without evidence, label an entire country a dangerous enemy. While a country that actually attacked us and continues to attack us is labelled as a friend. And then to watch supposedly intelligent, mature people and organizations jump on the bandwagon.

Sad and scary.

1STnTENDERBITS 460 comments · 8 Years

ksec said:

Worth doing some numbers.

Apple roughly ships 200M iPhone, 100M of those are not the latest, i.e iPhone 8 and below. Foxconn in India already has the ability to assemble those phones if and when needed. It is only a matter of scale.

US has roughly 30% of Apple's revenue, so assuming in perfect scale ( which won't be the case but for the sake of numbers ), Foxconn will need to assemble 15M older generation iPhone and 15M latest iPhone outside of China.

This doesn't make sense. You can't use # of phones as a proxy for revenue. There are too many things wrong here. You've basically said Apple needs to make 30M phones -total- for the US. Does that sound right to you?

Just find one of those estimates from Gartner, IDC, etc. and look at their yearly US sales estimates. That's approximately how many phones Foxconn would need to assemble outside of China. It's going to be more than 30M ;)