Displaying items by tag: Manufacturing

Inventor from the West African country Togo, Kodjo Afate Gnikou, created the first 3D printer from electronic equipment worth less than $100. 33 year old  Afate made an experimental functional 3D printer using an old desktop case, part of the diskette drive, parts from discarded scanner and printer found at the local dump.

Yantai factory complex owned by Foxconn, which is located in China's Shandong province, was a place where the interregional conflicts between domestic workers from Shandong province and workers from the province of Guizhou took place.

According to Reporter Brazil, an organization that deals with workers' rights in Brazil, authorities in the South American country have filed a lawsuit against the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, Samsung. The lawsuit was filed by the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and refers to the violation of workers' rights in a Samsung factory which is located in a free trade zone in Manaus.

According to Want ChinaTimes, Terry Gou, head of Hon Hai, better known by the name Foxconn, presented a smart watch that is able to communicate with a user's smartphone at a meeting of shareholders. Gou said that “with such a device, you can keep your phone in your pocket and simply check all kinds of messages on your watch”.

According to information released by CNBC, Microsoft is reportedly in talks with Michael Dell and private investment fund Silver Lake Partners to assist them in taking Dell, or in purchasing all shares in the company so they would have full ownership. [Ed – this plays into some rumors we have heard]

Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is preparing a significant investment in Japan for next year. According to unofficial sources, Foxconn will open several centers for research and development in Japan next year. Foxconn will have to make a total investment somewhere around one billion dollars to get things going.

Although we have not written about Apple in a while there is some news about them that just begs to be talked about and to have some of the myths about it cleared up. In today’s news there were quite a few articles about Apple coming back to the US to make products. Most of this was fluff, but it did contain some truth in it. Apple will invest $100 Million in an unnamed east coast manufacturing plant with the first installments of this investment to start in 2013. What most of the articles missed is that compared to what they dump into China and South America this is nothing.

The Lenovo Group declared the results for the first quarter of 2012. Lenovo made 8 million in sales which is a 35% improvement from last year, at the same time net profit has improved by 30%, or $141 million. These results are an indicator that Lenovo can maintain increasing profit in a competative market. On a worldwide scale they had 15% market share, which helps the company to have a significant advantage over others.  They also showed a 24.4% increase in net distribution; making it the 13th quarter in a row they beat the rest of the computer industry in this field.

Hewlett-Packard has closed out their invitations for bidding (RFQ) for 2013 notebook orders with Quanta Computer gabbing 50% of the builds . HP and Quanta made a deal for an estimated shipment volume of 20 million units making it 50% of the orders. Last year they finished with 40% of the total orders going to Quanta. This way the company wants to stay competative to it's huge rival Compal Electronics.

Going as far back as the initial Build release of Windows 8 we picked up a change in Microsoft’s business plans and their push in the market. It was not a subtle shift as some will have you think. It was the type of shift that borders on the desperate. It is like seeing someone that knows they have run out of time grasping at anything to make something stick. At that time we knew that something had to change and it brought back a conversation I had with a couple of investors while waiting in line for an nVidia press conferences at CES in 2011. The conversation was about modular components and how manufacturers could create an independent revenue stream by allowing for modular upgrades and online services.  For some reason we ended up talking about Azure and how it had become something of a failure for what Microsoft had wanted it to be.