Foxconn says Wisconsin facility will do both manufacturing and R&D
Foxconn's $10 billion facility in Wisconsin will handle both manufacturing and research, the company said on Friday, trying to staunch controversy over statements it made earlier this week.
President Trump helping to break ground.
The complex will operate as an "advanced manufacturing facility as well as a hub of high technology innovation," Foxconn told CNBC. The company said it made a decision after talks with the White House, including a direct conversation between President Trump and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou.
"Our decision is also based on a recent comprehensive and systematic evaluation to help determine the best fit for our Wisconsin project among TFT technologies," it added. "We have undertaken the evaluation while simultaneously seeking to broaden our investment across Wisconsin far beyond our original plans to ensure the company, our workforce, the local community, and the state of Wisconsin will be positioned for long-term success."
Earlier this week an assistant to Gou said the company was altering its original plans to focus more on research and engineering. The company received some $4 billion in tax breaks with the expectation that it would build LCD TV panels -- the assistant however said that Foxconn has "no place" in the U.S. TV market since it "can't compete."
Foxconn is Apple's main assembly partner, headquartered in Taiwan and operating mostly out of China. The company has been vague on its plans for Wisconsin, sometimes leading to speculation a U.S. factory could help serve Apple.
Its goals continue to include hitting 13,000 jobs, but hiring has slowed to the point that only 1,000 workers will come onboard by the end of 2020, instead of the original target of 5,200. It also hired just 178 people in 2018, missing the 260 it needed to get the first $9.5 million in tax credits.
Read Foxconn's full statement:
President Trump helping to break ground.
The complex will operate as an "advanced manufacturing facility as well as a hub of high technology innovation," Foxconn told CNBC. The company said it made a decision after talks with the White House, including a direct conversation between President Trump and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou.
"Our decision is also based on a recent comprehensive and systematic evaluation to help determine the best fit for our Wisconsin project among TFT technologies," it added. "We have undertaken the evaluation while simultaneously seeking to broaden our investment across Wisconsin far beyond our original plans to ensure the company, our workforce, the local community, and the state of Wisconsin will be positioned for long-term success."
Earlier this week an assistant to Gou said the company was altering its original plans to focus more on research and engineering. The company received some $4 billion in tax breaks with the expectation that it would build LCD TV panels -- the assistant however said that Foxconn has "no place" in the U.S. TV market since it "can't compete."
Foxconn is Apple's main assembly partner, headquartered in Taiwan and operating mostly out of China. The company has been vague on its plans for Wisconsin, sometimes leading to speculation a U.S. factory could help serve Apple.
Its goals continue to include hitting 13,000 jobs, but hiring has slowed to the point that only 1,000 workers will come onboard by the end of 2020, instead of the original target of 5,200. It also hired just 178 people in 2018, missing the 260 it needed to get the first $9.5 million in tax credits.
Read Foxconn's full statement:
After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility, which will be at the heart of the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park. This campus will serve both as an advanced manufacturing facility as well as a hub of high technology innovation for the region.
Our decision is also based on a recent comprehensive and systematic evaluation to help determine the best fit for our Wisconsin project among TFT technologies. We have undertaken the evaluation while simultaneously seeking to broaden our investment across Wisconsin far beyond our original plans to ensure the company, our workforce, the local community, and the state of Wisconsin will be positioned for long-term success.
We look forward to continuing to expand our investment in American talent in Wisconsin and the US.
Comments
This Foxconn factory never made any sense. Still doesn't. The infrastructure for the factory doesn't exist.
Note the recent NYT article detailing why Apple's attempt to build in the US failed -- for want of specially designed screws.
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. In thirty years, perhaps. US infrastructure didn't collapse -- it was killed little by little over 30 years.
The free market is not some all-knowing nirvana. Bad deals are made. It’s difficult to know whether corporate welfare is a good idea or not.
Sony became the new RCA and GE, first in radio and tv, then in recorders and everything else starting in the 60s. One could speculate that all the good electronics engineering in the US was being sucked up by defense and its spinoff aerospace.
It’s also possible that consumer-facing manufacturing capitalism in the US had always been too exploitive and hostile toward the customer to focus on producing the kind of desirable personal electronics that the Japanese were immediately able to produce for the world as soon as transistors reached mass manufacturability. The analog to Detroit’s monstrous tail fins and chrome that obsolesced every year was also happening in the US tv industry — gigantic furniture-like wood consoles that you’d see thrown out on the street a few years later when the color went out and the people in the picture all turned magenta. Meanwhile, Sony was producing simple rectangular boxes that were hardly larger than the screen, as if they were proud of the better picture, and not trying to sell you a piece of fake furniture to disguise the fact that it was a television.
Until Apple came along, we had truly given up on the ability of any American company to produce honestly desirable consumer products. Thanks to the reservoir of silicon technology in the Santa Clara Valley and the immigrants attracted from everywhere like Paul Jobs, we finally got a second chance at industrial renaissance for consumers. But no matter how much acid-fueled creativity there was around Palo Alto for Steve Jobs to hitch onto, the production of Apple computers could not succeed in the US, try as he might. All the efficiencies in manufacturing had moved to Asia starting three decades earlier.
We had the mental infrastructure, the software and the ethos of personal empowerment, but the hardware infrastructure had been thrown away down to the screw machines.
I always thought Apple would need to simplify the products to economically manufacture at home i.e. move the A-Series SoCs to S-Series SiPs (on NF1 sticks please)