Tech Shout!

Hon Hai Precision Industry will be soon starting a cell-phone assembly factory in India through affiliate Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) and set up a factory there to assemble contract personal computers sometime in 2006.

Offering customers quick services is the sole purpose of these projects. The company’s major customers of contract computers including Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell and Acer have ventured into the South Asian economic power.

Late 2005, FIH sent its personnel many times to inspect the investment situation in India. However, the project was not finalized then. FIH executives noted that the project has just lately entered into final stage. The scale of the planned facility would be expanded to meet customers’ need although initial size would not be considerable, they added.

Optimistic about the Indian market, handset heavyweights including Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG are aggressively planning to open facilities there. Considering high import tariff on handsets, the suppliers would prefer to open facilities to distribute their products there.

Hon Hai began planning PC-assembly factory in India last year to match projects of big customers including HP, Dell and Acer, which have aggressively planned operations in India.

FIH’s executives said that apart from India, their company was planning investments in other emerging markets including Brazil. The company will open another cell-phone assembly factory in Brazil to deal with orders from Nokia. At present the company is operating a cell-phone factory in Brazil.

Acer’s chairman, J.T. Wang, pointed out that his company planned to ship six million computers this year and 10 million systems next year mostly to rising markets like Brazil and India. Hon Hai is currently Acer’s exclusive contract supplier of desktop computers.