Taiwan's Hon Hai 2012 sales up 16 percent - Breitbart

Taiwan tech giant Hon Hai Precision, which makes gadgets for Apple, said Thursday sales in 2012 rose 16 percent year-on-year.

Hon Hai, which is better known as Foxconn and also does work for Sony and Nokia, said revenues hit a record high of TW$3.22 trillion ($111 billion).

Sales in December were up almost 14 percent on-year at Tw$360 billion, which surprised analysts.

“We had expected sales in December to fall by at least 10 percent in the off-peak season,” an analyst from a foreign securities firm based in Taipei told AFP.

Foxconn is the world’s largest computer component manufacturer and assembles products for Apple — including the iPhone — plus Sony and Nokia.

The group employs about one million workers in China, roughly half of them based in its main facility in Shenzhen.

Since 2010, more than a dozen Foxconn employees in China have died in apparent suicides, which activists blamed on tough working conditions, prompting calls for better treatment of staff.