After a rough year in China, Taiwan’s Foxconn has selected Michael Chiang as the new chief of its iPhone assembly unit, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a source with knowledge of the situation.
Based on a Bloomberg article, Chiang will take over for longstanding boss Wang Charng-yang as chief of the iPhone manufacturing unit.
Foxconn decided not to answer. A request for clarification from Apple was not immediately responded to.
The biggest manufacturer of Apple Inc.’s (AAPL.O) iPhones in the world, Foxconn’s plant in China’s Zhengzhou city, sustained major damage late last year after a COVID-19 epidemic and measures made to restrict the virus caused thousands of employees to depart.
The facility was also affected by a surge of staff dissatisfaction over payment concerns, however, earlier in January, sources told Reuters that the facility was almost returning to full output after December deliveries achieved around 90% of original estimates.
As reported in a Bloomberg article, Chiang’s hiring is a piece of Foxconn Chairman Young Liu’s initiatives to encourage younger executives in order to keep the firm’s supply chain dominance in the midst of escalating competition from Chinese rivals.
In order to compensate for the loss of manufacturing at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant the year before, the Financial Times newspaper stated earlier this month that Apple was planning to employ Chinese parts supplier Luxshare Precision Industry Co Ltd to manufacture flagship iPhone models.
Earlier in December, the COVID-affected Zhengzhou plant of Apple manufacturer Foxconn, which is situated in China, withdrew its “closed-loop” management constraints on Thursday, according to a statement on its WeChat account.
The Foxconn factory, which is situated in the Zhengzhou Industrial Park, has been shut from the outside world for 56 days, based on the report.
The biggest contract electronics manufacturer in the world predicts that full operation will continue at the Zhengzhou plant in late December or early January, based on a firm source who spoke with Reuters on Monday. The firm has been working to refill the site’s workforce after thousands of employees left over the past month.
About Foxconn:
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd trading in Taiwan and Foxconn International is a global electronics contract manufacturer which was formed in 1974 in Tucheng, New Taipei City. It was founded by Terry Gou who was also a former Chairman of the company.
For significant American, Canadian, Chinese, Finnish, and Japanese businesses, Foxconn produces consumer electronics. The BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, all Nintendo gaming devices since the GameCube (aside from later Nintendo DS models), Nokia devices, Sony devices (including the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles), Google Pixel devices, Xiaomi devices, all Xbox One successors, as well as a handful of CPU sockets, such as the TR4 CPU socket on certain motherboards, are noteworthy items produced by Foxconn.
Approximately 40 per cent of the total of all electronics products worldwide sales as of 2012 were produced in Foxconn factories, according to reports.
