foxconn

Hewlett-Packard is facing pressure to keep its PC business inside the company according to an Asia-based report.

Growing concern about the fate of HP's PC unit is pushing "channel operators" to switch their orders from HP to brands such as Dell, Acer, and Lenovo, according to a report in Digitimes, citing sources.

The report names Acer as a major beneficiary of the shift.

HP's Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) partners, including Quanta Computer, Inventec, Wistron, and Foxconn Electronics, will "regain...confidence" in HP if it decides not to spin off its PC business, the report … Read more

The iPhone 5 has yet to hit the market, but at least two Apple's suppliers are already seeing strong sales by delivering parts for the new phone, according to Taiwan Economic News.

Operating at full steam to make the iPhone 5's touch screens, TPK Holdings brought in record revenue of more than 11.1 billion Taiwan dollars ($371 million) in August, down a bit from July but up 101 percent from a year ago. Chief Financial Officer Freddie Liu attributed the sales surge to booming shipments of touch panels for the iPhone 4, but "implied" that … Read more

For those doubters out there who think that Intel's next-generation mainstream chip is delayed, laptop manufacturers at the Intel Developer Forum are sending another message.

Major laptop manufacturers like Foxconn, Pegatron, and Inventec are showing fully functional "Ivy Bridge" Ultrabooks on the Forum conference floor here today. Those three companies together make--or have made--many of the laptops from major brands like Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

Ivy Bridge is the chip design that follows the current Sandy Bridge processor. It is the first to use Intel's touted 3D transistor technology and offers a substantial boost in graphics chip … Read more

Production of Apple's next iPhone is said to be in full swing, with the company on track to have some 5 million to 6 million phones ready by the end of the month, according to a new report.

Citing anonymous industry sources, supply chain tracker DigiTimes today said original equipment manufacturer Foxconn Electronics, which has made Apple goods in the past, is currently producing 150,000 iPhone 5 units a day.

DigiTimes added that Foxconn is joined by Pegatron Technology, which will produce around 15 percent of the devices for Apple, but those units may not ship until 2012. … Read more

Apple has reportedly already begun training its retail store employees on both iOS 5 and iCloud, sources have told 9to5Mac.

Such training usually kicks in a couple of weeks before a new product actually launches, which could mean that the latest iOS release and new cloud-based service may debut before the rumored timeframe of mid or late October.

These dates may also indicate the timing of the iPhone 5, according to 9to5Mac, which says that Apple usually unveils a new iOS version "in the days surrounding" a new iPhone. Last year, Apple released iOS 4 on June 21, … Read more

Apple may be eyeing heavy demand for the iPad throughout the rest of the year based on the number of tablets shipped from supplier Foxconn.

By the end of this month, Apple will have received 20 million iPad 2 tablets from Foxconn just for the third quarter, according to a report yesterday from DigiTimes.

That 20 million figure marks a 60 percent increase over the number of iPads that Foxconn shipped to Apple in the second quarter, noted DigiTimes, which added that the tablet orders are expected to provide major growth for Apple over the second half of the year.

In Apple's fiscal third quarter, which ended June 25, the company sold 9.25 million iPads, a gain of 183 percent over the year-ago quarter.

The iPad 2 launched mid-March but quickly sold out as supply was unable to keep up with the initial demand. During Apple's second-quarter earnings call on April 20, then-Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, now CEO, said that the company was trying to ship enough iPads to meet the "staggering" demand but couldn't say when that might happen.… Read more

Apple's manufacturing partners expect their relationships with the iPhone maker to remain strong, even though there's a new CEO at the company.

In a statement yesterday, Taiwan-based manufacturer, Hon Hai Precision Industry, said that it expects its relationship with Apple to become even closer under the new leadership. That sentiment was echoed by DigiTimes sources at Apple suppliers, who said that they don't anticipate any order changes to come about.

Earlier this week, Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple. In a resignation letter to the board, Jobs recommended his chief operating officer Tim Cook assume … Read more

They vacuum our floors and help fight our wars, but robots always seem to be just over the horizon. They're never as commonplace as we expected.

Still, that hasn't stopped prognosticators from predicting that robots will be the automobile of the 21st century, or that robots makers are now where Microsoft was in the late 1970s. The markets for industrial and service robots are already worth billions of dollars each, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) data.

Robotkind certainly got a major boost this week when electronics giant Foxconn, which makes everything from iPads to LCD TVs, announced that it's replacing some of its human workers, which number more than 900,000, with more than a million robots.

Of course, we all wish we'd bought shares in Microsoft and Google early on. That's the kind of thinking that led Frank Tobe, author of The Robot Report blog, to look into the sector and try to identify publicly traded robot makers that have growth potential.

In a recent critique of a list of 10 robot makers that appeared on the Nasdaq Web site, the Report's sub-blog, Everything Robotic, noted that some of the world's biggest robot companies, such as Japanese industrial robot makers Yaskawa and Fanuc, were not included.

Tobe also pointed out that Nasdaq missed rising stars like Intuitive Surgical, which produces the da Vinci surgery system, and Adept Technology, which makes automation systems.

Intrigued, we asked Tobe, a former political consultant, why he thinks now might be a good time to invest in our robotic future. … Read more

Foxconn, the hardware manufacturer made famous by a rash of well-publicized suicides, plans to replace some of its workers with robots.

The Taiwanese company, which manufacturers laptops, mobile devices, and other hardware for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony, plans to replace factory workers with more than 1 million robots, according to a state news agency Xinhua report. Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, told employees at a dance Friday that the move is designed to improve efficiency and combat rising labor costs.

The company currently employs about 1.2 million people, but it's unknown how many people … Read more