10 years ago, half of China's mobile phones were firmly grasped by Apple . At that time, the price of an Apple 5 was equivalent to a TV with good quality. Many people said that "there is a reason to be expensive."
However, most of the mobile phones that sell thousands or tens of thousands of yuan are actually produced in China's OEM factories.
This is an industrial chain that has long been no longer hidden. From screws to large casings and fuselages, it can be mass-produced and processed in Shenzhen's factory buildings, then assembled, labeled, and finally packed and sold to all parts of the world.
There is also a saying circulating in the market: One of the 7 Apple phones in the world is produced from Foxconn .
Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that started with the production of mobile phone spare parts, achieved revenue of 1 billion in just three years after its establishment, and almost monopolized the global mobile phone OEM industry, including Apple.
Its founder Guo Taiming even spoke in public: China cannot do without Foxconn. In one day, Foxconn will "have food" in the mainland.
However, he completely miscalculated the domestic mobile phone market and did not know the fundamental reason why Foxconn could succeed. Naturally, when the world economic situation changes drastically, Foxconn will eventually become the tears of the times.
So, how did Terry Gou found Foxconn from 0 to 1, and how did he lead Foxconn to an uncertain future?
From "plastic king" to "mobile king", the prototype of Foxconn began to appear
In 1950, Terry Gou was born in Taiwan, China. He followed his father's ancestral home and was from Jincheng, Shanxi.
However, Terry Gou's feelings for the mainland are very complicated.
Hometown in his heart is a small dot on the map. This little dot always touches my father's heart, but it cannot attract Guo Taiming. He listened to his father's reminiscence of bitterness and sweetness without any intention of going back and taking a look.
It was not until many years later that he came to Shenzhen for the first time that he truly realized this land with potential.
Guo Taiming's first half of his life was no different from that of ordinary people. He studied step by step, then joined the army, returned from his career and went to work in the factory. As a result, he met the love of his life. The two fell in love and fell in love.
However, Terry Gou’s love is not an ordinary person, but the daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong rich man.
This rich man has more than 60 billion yuan, and the Guo family can't even reach the other person's fraction. Therefore, not only the rich are unwilling to do so, but Guo Taiming's father is also scared and feels that his son is arguing with others.
But Terry Gou was not happy. He felt that although he didn’t have much money now, it did not mean he didn’t have money in the future. So, he told his rich and beautiful girlfriend that as long as he has confidence in him, Terry Gou, he will one day let her be a rich wife.
My girlfriend was very moved after hearing this and was determined to follow Terry Gou, and even had a big fight with her family.
And Terry Gou did prove himself with his actions. After quitting his job in the factory, he went into business to start his first company. From plastic products to the production of black and white TV components, Guo Taiming has shown excellent talent in doing business.
And his plastic factory also began to make a profit. It was in this year that he achieved a double harvest of career and love.
However, Terry Gou's goal did not stop there. He set his sights on precision industries that few people did at that time, and unceremoniously invested 16 million to study computer cable assembly.
This money was finally proven to be invested correctly by the market. Guo Taiming's precision component factory soon opened its branch to the United States, but Americans do not understand Chinese and need a loud name. Foxconn came into being.
Later, someone else was in archaeology, why did he give such a name? The closest explanation is that Terry Gou believes that doing business requires being as smart as fox, and Foxconn started out as a connector.
No matter what the reason for Terry Gou is, the era of Foxconn is coming.
In 1988, Foxconn's employees had exceeded 1,000 and its revenue reached 1 billion yuan.In the same year, Terry Gou made the decision to move the factory in Shenzhen and bought 1,000 acres of land in Longhua Town at the speed of light.
In this weedy wasteland, Foxconn's factory rose from the ground, production instruments were transported in, produced, processed, and assembled, and people wearing employee uniforms could be seen everywhere. A modern industrial park has begun to take shape.
treats the factory as a training ground. Within nine months, employees "jump"
Foxconn's success is unprecedented.
Due to the popularity of mobile phone communication, Foxconn, which originally focused on the computer field, turned to the track of mobile phone OEM. The similarity between the two has left Foxconn returning to its peak production speed without any transition period.
At that time, Foxconn produced products rely on two brands: high efficiency and good quality.
So, when Apple's Jobs first saw Foxconn's OEM , he was already moved. He has always been known for his nitpicking, and believes that he has found a soulmate. Everyone should be familiar with the later development of
- Foxconn took over Apple's almost monopoly OEM rights.
Perhaps, we can regard this as a commercial transaction between Jobs and Terry Gou: Jobs pursues the quality of the product, and Terry Gou also needs a brand with a huge market to endorse Foxconn . In the end, both of them got what they wanted.
After taking over the task of OEM in Apple, Terry Gou was even more proud.
Starting from the first generation of Apple, almost every new product will be launched, which will cause people to rob. There are also many "Apple fans" who have to change a mobile phone whenever a new product is released. The speed of changing the phone is comparable to changing clothes. High frequencies like
bring high loads of work on the production line, and behind Foxconn's high returns are all supported by hundreds of thousands of Chinese employees.
The most ordinary front-line employee can sleep up to four to five hours a day. What's more, after working for several days, he still does not get proper rest. This kind of scene can be seen everywhere in Foxconn.
However, Terry Gou does not feel that he is exploiting employees. On the contrary, he believes that Foxconn has brought "blessings" to mainlanders.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were almost no mobile OEM company in mainland China. The emergence of Foxconn just filled this vacancy and created a considerable total GDP for the local area, providing a large number of jobs.
, behind the seemingly peaceful situation, there are actually huge crises and contradictions.
Since the beginning of 2010, Foxconn has been continuously jumping down from the roof of the factory for nine consecutive months. Even if Guo Taiming personally went to the factory to guard the site, the tragedy could not be stopped.
There was only a few hours between the 12th and 13th jumps. In the end, Terry Gou had to install barbed wire outside the Foxconn dormitory building simply and roughly, so that no one would jump off the building again.
At that time, a video of "30 Wutai Mountain Monks' Practices" circulated on the Internet caused an uproar on the public.
Until then, all the people thought seriously about what happened to Foxconn? What is sacrificed for high efficiency and high quality?
pulls off the "fig leaf" of militarized management. Foxconn is like a fine-operated machine. Every employee is a part on the machine. Even if the parts are broken, in Terry Gou's philosophy, he can change one again.
So, during this period, while Foxconn made a lot of money, its social reputation was also mixed.
transfer production line, "increasing" the Indian market, but frequently "not adapting to the local environment"
Foxconn has been deeply engaged in the mainland for more than ten years and has gradually shown signs of fatigue.
This is inseparable from its business strategy that binds Apple. At the beginning, when Jobs chose China, he valued the low-cost domestic labor force at that time. However, with the reform and opening up of , China is no longer a "hot commodity" for Apple. After
successively removed eight production lines in China, Foxconn also followed Apple and was ready to move.
However, OEM business still needs to be done. In Guo Taiming's view, Foxconn's best way out is in Southeast Asia, so China is withdrawing its factory here, while Vietnam and India on the other hand have already started investing in building factories with great fanfare.
Foxconn spent $1 billion to enter a small factory in Tamil Nadu, India alone.
Even many media headlines are boasting that Terry Gou will replicate the legend of Shenzhen again. However, they all forgot that a large part of the reason for Foxconn's success in China comes from the hard work of the Chinese.
Putting aside India's national conditions, Foxconn will suffer a lot if it wants to transplant China's approach.
First of all, Indians do not accept overtime at all, and it is even more impossible to obey Foxconn's militarized management.
Many Foxconn managers went to India and found that the system became difficult to use. Working hours are clearly stipulated, but there are always people who make excuses to not arrive on time, and there are also many people who are lazy.
plus Indians generally have low education levels. Often, China takes twice as long to get to India for one cycle of training, but the training effect is at least half the discount.
At the same time, the market in India is not as good as that in China. Many people don’t even care about food and clothing, so where can they get the money to buy an Apple phone?
These problems appeared in front of Terry Gou in a row. After Foxconn struggled to hold on for 8 months, things got worse.
In April 2021, a large-scale epidemic was exposed in India. When public medical care could not catch up with the number of infections, a large number of factory workers experienced close contact infections. Among them, Tamil Nadu is the hardest hit area of the epidemic.
During this period, Foxconn always insisted on not closing the factory, but no matter how great the determination to make money, it cannot withstand the threat of the virus.
On May 12, Foxconn had infected more than 100 workers, and there were countless close contacts. Under huge public pressure, Terry Gou had to announce the closure of Indian factories, and internal personnel only went out but did not enter.
At the same time, Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory issued a new rule that never existed:
"If new employees work for 90 days and are on duty for no less than 55 days, they will receive a bonus of 7,500 yuan from the company."
Many people regard this move as Guo Taiming's "self-rescue". After all, India is still far away from the official resumption of work. If the Chinese market is lost, isn't it just that they have picked up sesame and lost watermelon?
From Terry Gou's series of actions, we can see that as a businessman, he is very outstanding, but in his understanding of the market environment and the future of the industry, he lacks the confidence to be a Chinese.
Foxconn's success is not due to one person, one factory, but by millions of employees and managers, as well as our increasingly powerful country, to become a world-renowned "world factory" from a small OEM factory.
I don’t know, when Terry Gou looks back on the past, will he feel ashamed of the saying “China is inseparable from Foxconn”.
On the contrary, what cannot be separated from China is Foxconn, which has caught up with the dividend period of reform and opening up and the development of the times. If Terry Gou is still obsessed with it, then his future with Foxconn will inevitably have a long way to go.
-END-
Author: He Yuyao
Editor: Qingcao
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