With more than lm workers, Foxconn may be China's largest private employer. The secretive electronics giant is renowned for taking designs from Western firms, such as Apple, and using cheap labour to crank them out in huge quantities. But its fantastically successful business model seems to have run its course.At a closed retreat in late July, Terry Gou, the chief executive of the Taiwanese-owned company (which is also known as Hon Hai), unveiled a plan to hire lm robots by 2013. In a public statement, Foxconn talked about moving its human workers "higher up the value chain" and into sexy fields such as research. But at least some will surely lose their jobs.
展开▼
