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Financial Times reported earlier today that Foxconn has enacted a hiring freeze at most of its Chinese facilities due to reduced demand for the iPhone 5.
“Currently, none of the plants in mainland China have hiring plans,” said Liu Kun, a company spokesman at Foxconn’s largest manufacturing facility, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen across the border from Hong Kong.
Human resources officials at Foxconn’s largest factories, local government officials and external recruiters working with the company said there had been internal notices on Tuesday and Wednesday to halt hiring until at least the end of March, in response to reduced orders for the iPhone 5.
Recruiters specifically pointed to hiring freezes at Foxconn's massive facilities in Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, and Chengdu, all of which focus on assembly of iPhones and iPads.
An expectation of hiring picking up again in late March would be in line with rumors of Apple beginning to ramp up production of the iPhone 5S, but a Foxconn spokesman told Bloomberg that the current hiring freeze actually has nothing to do with waning demand for Apple products.
Foxconn halted recruitment until the end of March after more employees returned from the Chinese New Year break than a year earlier, Bruce Liu, a spokesman for the Taipei-based company, said today in a phone interview. The decision wasn’t related to iPhone 5 production, he said.
The Chinese New Year festivities last for several weeks, with many factories running at greatly reduced capacity as workers return to their homes. The offical two-week festivities conclude with the annual Lantern Festival, which takes place this Sunday, February 24.
Top Rated Comments
Good point. Apple is responsable for 9-14% of manufacture, up to 15% of turnover for Foxconn. Out of that, the iPhone5 is 1, maybe 2%. There are still about the same numbers of 4S and 4 being build. So, this 2% of manufacturing capacity should be responsible for a hiring freeze?
And the introduction of the first 30000 robots (out of a planed 1M) has also nothing to do with it. The massive decline in Dell computers, the loss of Samsung manufacture to there own factories (smaller hands) the reduction by 50% of Surface Tablets, the virtual standstill in Sony Playstations (all made in whole or in part by Foxconn) is not a contributing factor?
So the company comes out and explains even why there is no relation to the iPhone5, a tiny blob in the grand picture of 1.2 million Fosconn employees, and still someone tries to make a story about it? Is there no real news?
I'm sure you've all see this before, but it's always funny. And not intended to be racist, at least on my part.
Acer Inc.
Amazon.com
Apple Inc.
Cisco
Dell
Google
Hewlett-Packard
Microsoft
Motorola Mobility
Nintendo
Nokia
Sony
Toshiba
Vizio
These are all customers of Foxconn. Are they saying the iPhone 5 even keeps these other companies in business to require the need for the employees they have now?
Go.
What, does no one remember iPhone Girl? (https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=547777)