Two years ago, at an Alibaba conference, Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou, did not sleep all night after listening to Alibaba's founder Jack Ma's speech on "new retail, new manufacturing, new finance, new technology, and new resources". Well, the leader of the global manufacturing industry was disturbed by the new manufacturing proposed by Jack Ma.
In the past 43 years of development, Hon Hai (the mainland factory is known as "Foxconn") has always been a trend-setter in the manufacturing industry, but the gradual decline in OEM profits in recent years has caused the company to suffer a lot of controversy. When an Internet company proposed to do "new manufacturing", Guo Taiming said that he was a little caught off guard after hearing it.
But today, two years later, Guo Taiming is obviously much calmer. Recently, Hon Hai held an extraordinary shareholders meeting in Taiwan, China, he said that Hon Hai is no longer a foundry, and has transformed from a hardware company to a platform company. At the same time, he announced that he will make major investments in artificial intelligence research and development, and will provide 10 billion Taiwan dollars (about 2.143 billion yuan) in the next five years, from AI talent cultivation, IoT industrial field applications, big data analysis and other fields, to fully promote The group has transformed into an AI-driven industrial Internet enterprise.
A Foxconn insider told China Business News that Taiwan's manufacturing industry will not be a sunset, and the real economy of manufacturing will always exist. Hon Hai started from physical manufacturing and has more than 40 years of experience and technology leading the world. It will realize transformation through the tool of AI.
Invest in AI
At the just-concluded EGM, Hon Hai Technology Group officially announced the launch of two AI research and cultivation programs. On the one hand, the "Hon Hai Industrial Internet AI Application Research Institute" was established to assist the group in developing AI innovations of "Industrial Internet + Robots". , big data analysis and other fields, to fully promote the group's transformation into an AI-driven industrial Internet enterprise; at the same time, American genetic scientist Craig Fant was invited to jointly create the "Asia-Pacific Prospective Health Management Service".
Guo Taiming said that Hon Hai started from physical manufacturing and has more than 40 years of experience and technology leading the world. Through the tool of AI, it will create an industrial Internet AI application ecosystem constructed by "cloud-moving, intelligent network + robot". He also emphasized that the investment of NT$10 billion is mainly used to recruit talents related to AI applications and deploy AI applications in all production bases.
Unconsciously, the huge manufacturing empire of Hon Hai is constantly approaching artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing.
Today's Hon Hai is no longer the manufacturing giant that grew rapidly after producing OEM iPhones. It is everywhere in the supply chain and value chain.
According to the relevant person in charge of Foxconn, the Hon Hai Industrial Internet AI Application Research Institute was established in Taiwan, China this year. With a cross-plant, international-level operation scale, it will help accelerate the speed of the group's transformation. In the future, it will be based on application needs in the United States, Japan, and China. Set up bases in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and other places. In addition, Hon Hai's partners include people like Wu Enda, an artificial intelligence expert. It is understood that Landing.ai, the newly established company of Wu Enda, began to cooperate with Hongteng Technology, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Technology Group, in July last year, to promote the latter to use AI applications to accelerate the transformation of the AI gene of the industrial Internet.
"As for the investment layout in recent years, Hon Hai has long been not a traditional foundry, but can achieve customized intelligent production." Guo Taiming said in his speech at the 2017 Guangzhou Fortune Global Forum.
Speed up the transformation
Gou said at the shareholders meeting that Foxconn's goal is to become "a global innovative artificial intelligence platform, not just a manufacturing company." But mentioning Foxconn still brings to mind the concept of "Apple's largest mobile phone foundry", since more than 50% of its revenue comes from Apple. As Foxconn's largest customer, Apple's every move also affects Foxconn's heart.
The financial report for the third quarter of 2017 released by Hon Hai Precision showed that the company's operating income was NT$1,078.8 billion (about US$35.75 billion), which was basically the same as the same period last year, but the net profit attributable to the parent company hit a record high in 2008. The biggest drop since the fourth quarter was NT$21 billion (about 4.5 billion yuan), down 39% from the same period last year and far below the NT$35.6 billion originally expected by S&P Global Market Research. Obviously, Apple's influence on Hon Hai is still huge.
"In fact, Hon Hai's fundamentals are very good, but it is still often affected by news, resulting in strong foreign capital and weak domestic capital." Guo Taiming emphasized at the above meeting that in the past three years, we have been thinking about how to transform. Previously, including the NT$270 billion investment in the 10.5-generation panel factory in Guangzhou, and the rush to bid for Japan's Toshiba Semiconductor with 3 trillion yen, it was also for the layout of AI.
"The massive amount of data generated by applications such as images and big data through 8K panels ultimately requires a lot of storage devices, and a large amount of 8K image big data can analyze useful artificial intelligence." Guo Taiming said that this is also his interest in Toshiba memory. reason.
At the same time, he emphasized that Hon Hai has already operated lights-off factories for a period of time, and these factories can generate a lot of valuable data. Now Hon Hai is not just a foundry, but has the structure level and analysis of big data, and is a manufacturer that is very close to artificial intelligence. In addition, Hon Hai currently has high-speed computing centers in Shenzhen and Kaohsiung, and collects production line data in factories in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Prague, Wisconsin, USA, etc. Through this intelligent manufacturing link, Hon Hai will have the world's largest in the future. Industrial Internet.
The above-mentioned Foxconn insiders told reporters that in 2018, the company's transformation will continue, but the transformation of a company requires continuous practice and exploration to finally know whether it will be successful, and it will take time to certify.
Innolux to cut 10,000 jobs this year
At the same time, according to the Nikkei Asian Review, Innolux, the display panel division of Foxconn, plans to cut more than 10,000 jobs in 18 years, which is accompanied by the reduction of personnel after the application of manufacturing automation.
Innolux is a LCD panel manufacturer under Foxconn, and most of Innolux's factories are located in Taiwan. Duan Xingjian, chairman of Innolux, said at a press conference on Tuesday that by the end of this year, Innolux's workforce will be reduced to less than 50,000 people. According to statistics at the end of 2017, Innolux had 60,000 employees.
Article source: Chinese Daily