Terry Gou clearly enjoyed himself last week, when joining a crowd of break-dancing young workers who man the factory lines at Foxconn Technology Group, the company he built into the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer. He was throwing a party at the company’s largest factory complex, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, as part of efforts to give his manufacturing colossus a human face. Rather than leaving it at just dancing, however, a radiant Mr Gou went on to announce plans to equip his factories with as many as 1m new robots, some of which would “replace” human beings. His audience was shocked.
The stunning numbers, combined with the bizarre tactic of announcing automation plans in a workers’ pep talk, were typical of this charismatic and unpredictable Taiwanese entrepreneur, as he looks to enlarge the company he has built over the past 37 years. But for Mr Gou the move is personal too: it will decide whether his own Asian rags-to-riches story culminates in the creation of a truly world-class company.
Foxconn controls close to half of the world’s market for outsourced technology products, from iPads and game consoles to personal computers. But Mr Gou has recently admitted that his organisation faces new challenges grabbing further market share, halving his forecast for annual revenue growth.