Hon Hai Precision Industry earned record annual profits last year and expanded its margins, despite production challenges with Apple’s newest iPhone and worries that it has not lived up to sales expectations.
The world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer by revenues, beat expectations with a fourth-quarter operating margin of 3.67 per cent, the widest in three years. 2012 net profit rose 16 per cent to T$94.8bn ($3.2bn).
The rise of Hon Hai, known by its trade name Foxconn, shows how important Apple remains to the electronics manufacturing industry even as concerns persist about rising competition from groups such as Google and Samsung Electronics.