Recently, there were media reports that India's Minister of State for Electronics and IT said that Apple is rapidly expanding India's production capacity, and it is expected that by 2028, the proportion of iPhones made in India will reach 25%, that is, one out of every four will come from India.
Among them, Foxconn can be said to have contributed a lot. As Apple's largest assembler, Foxconn has the largest share of iPhone manufacturing in India. However, Guo Taiming never dreamed that the second "Foxconn" would quickly appear.
Foxconn was just an inconspicuous small manufacturer at the beginning, but when it came to the mainland to build factories and develop, it enjoyed the dividends of our reform and opening up, enjoyed the preferential policies we provided, and obtained enough high-quality, hard-working employees.
In this case, Foxconn has grown rapidly and has become more and more influential in the field of electronic foundry, so that it has the ability to undertake a large number of assembly orders from Apple, and can become the world's largest electronic foundry.
However, after becoming famous, Guo Taiming's attitude changed, and he even publicly clamored that he came to the mainland to build a factory to give us food.
That's not all, Guo Taiming also thinks that Foxconn's rise is entirely because of Apple's orders, so he hugs Apple's thighs. When Apple proposed to transfer abroad, Foxconn responded positively and quickly went overseas to invest and transfer production capacity.
You know, Foxconn has built 44 factories in the mainland, and the number of employees reached 1.2 million at its peak. The scale of Foxconn not only solves a lot of employment for us, but also directly drives the economic development of the factory location.
In this way, if Foxconn blindly transfers production capacity, will it have a great impact on us?
The answer is that there is definitely an impact. For example, since last year, Foxconn has increased the speed of capacity transfer and closed many factories one after another. According to the reporter's on-site inspection, the area around the factory was very prosperous, but now it has become depressed.
India's iPhone production capacity accounted for only about 5% at the beginning of 2023, but by the end of the year, it accounted for 14%.
Foxconn's continuous transfer of production capacity will indeed cause us to lose a lot of jobs, and it will also affect the scale of local export trade. But the impact is still limited, because Foxconn is only engaged in low-value-added, labor-intensive foundries.
In fact, such enterprises do not have too high requirements for technology, because they are also easy to replace. It is worth mentioning that in recent years, domestic foundry enterprises have developed rapidly, such as BYD, Lixun Precision, etc., which have the ability to replace.
Some time ago, BYD said that it has OEM many mobile phones such as Huawei and Xiaomi, including some products of Apple.
BYD has not only become the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer, but also has a very fast growth rate in the field of electronic foundry. It is said that the annual revenue of BYD electronic foundry has reached 150 billion, which is enough to show the strength of foundry.
Not only BYD, Lixun Precision is even more powerful. Like Foxconn, Luxshare Precision is an electronic assembly manufacturer, specializing in the assembly of electronic products such as mobile phones and computers, and is also an OEM partner that Apple attaches great importance to.
The point is, Apple has been supporting the growth of Luxshare Precision. It may also be that he doesn't want to rely too much on Foxconn, Apple intends to support it, and Cook has also visited Luxshare Precision many times, and has also given about 27% of the orders for the iPhone15 series to Luxshare.
Today, Lixun Precision has 200,000 employees, which can be called the second "Foxconn", and may be surpassed in the future.
In stark contrast to the rapid growth of Luxshare's spirit, Foxconn's life has become difficult, and it has lost a lot of money to build a factory in the United States, but it has ended in failure, and it has gone to Southeast Asia and India in the past two years, and has also tasted a lot of bitter fruits.
These places are not only imperfect, but also the quality of employees is generally low, the quality of products cannot be improved, and problems are frequent.
Although Foxconn has won the largest share of assembly in India, it still faces an important problem, that is, Tata, India's largest consortium, began to assemble after acquiring Wistron, and also poached people from Foxconn to become the largest assembly plant in India.
Because, don't look at Foxconn's share in India now, but I am afraid that it will not be able to escape the fate of being suppressed, because India is known as the "graveyard of foreign companies", Samsung, Microsoft, Google and other giants have suffered losses, and Foxconn is no exception.
When Foxconn regrets it, it is impossible to return to the mainland market, because mainland foundries such as Luxshare Precision and BYD have risen rapidly, and Foxconn's outward migration capacity will naturally be replaced, and there is no "way back"!
Foxconn's initiative to move away from the outside just makes room for us to make the market, and we can just achieve domestic substitution.