Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd. plans to focus on research and development, patents and even e-commerce to reduce its dependence on Apple, which reportedly accounts for roughly 60% of its revenue, Reuters reports.
The company’s chairman has already expressed the company’s plans to better Apple as sales have declined nearly 13% due to Apple’s slowing growth. Foxconn will diversify into higher-profit business. As a first step it will hire up to 10,000 engineers across Taiwan, the company chairman Terry Gou said during the annual shareholder meeting.
He also pointed to Foxconn’s new focal points: since the company ranks No. 8 globally in terms of amount of patents owned, it will focus on research and development, software and patent rights.
The failure of brick-and-mortar retail business — initiated by partnership with German retailer Metro AG — led the chairman to focus on e-commerce in China.
Furthermore, the company plans to invest in Indonesia where it will allegedly manufacture and sell cellphones for local brands and will expand in the U.S. at some point.
Hon Hai also hopes to drive revenue growth with plans to split off its connector business into a separate unit as a prelude to a public share offer (IPO) three years later, Gou said. Making it an independent company would help increase the unit’s sales by 20 percent in the first year, company chairman Terry Gou said.
The company has more than 20 other business divisions which could be split off into separate units, he added.
Hon Hai, the flagship company of the Foxconn Technology Group, earned more than $100 billion in revenue in 2012.
