Foxconn's Chengdu Factory Turns Out 16 M. Units of iPad in First Half of This Year

Taipei, July 25, 2012 (CENS)--Foxconn Technology Group, a globally leading EMS (electronic manufacturing service) provider, has been increasingly wielding its influence on the supply chain of iPad tablet PCs, given the fact that the company's production factory located in Chengdu, western China, alone turned out 16 million units of such tablet PCs in the first half of the year.

The plant was constructed beginning in October, 2009, when Foxconn signed an investment agreement with the Chengdu government on the matter, and was inaugurated to produce tablet PCs a year later.

For sure, Chengdu government officials said, the plant's shipment of iPad for the whole 2012 will exceed some 20 million units it shipped in 2011, when global sales of the tablet PC family approximately totaled 40 million units.

The officials furthered that the annual output of tablet PCs at Foxconn's Chengdu plant can reach 50 million for the moment, making it one of the world's largest manufacturing bases for such consumer devices. For the first half of this year, the plant's export revenue already amounted to US$6.043 billion to account for 41% of Chengdu's total exports in the same period.

The significance of the Foxconn Chengdu plant to Apple Inc.'s promotions of new iPad models is persistently growing, as the Chinese IT news website, MIC Gadget, reported earlier that the plant plans to recruit 10,000 more production line operators and 3,000 quality control staffers and technical engineers in the short term, prepared for the upcoming iPad Mini.

On the other hand, Chengdu government officials revealed that Foxconn has been constructing a new manufacturing base for optoelectronic displays alongside the said tablet PC production factory, which costs US$3.5 billion and is estimated to achieve annual revenue of US$4.4 billion when becoming operational in the future.