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发帖数: 3096 | 1 http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/03/apple_believed_to
After gross margins rebounded at Foxconn parent company Hon Hai Precision,
one analyst has said he believes Apple "stepped up" and helped to pay for
wage increases at its manufacturing partner.
While Hon Hai's gross margins went up, Apple saw its own gross margins drop
from 47 percent last quarter to 42.8 percent this quarter. Its conservative
guidance for the current September quarter goes even lower to 38.5 percent.
Analyst Adnaan Ahmad with Berenberg Bank said in a note to investors
provided to AppleInsider on Monday that he believes the changes in gross
margins at both companies signal that Apple probably played a major part in
wage increases at Foxconn.
Ahmad noted that Hon Hai indicated this quarter that it was trying to get
better terms from some of its customers, after labor costs increased by as
much as 100 percent.
Apple's capital expenditures ballooned from $440 million in the December
2011 quarter to $2.1 billion in the June quarter. But those expenses were
not related to Apple's plans to expand its corporate campus, Ahmad said, as
the company recognized those costs in 2010.
While Ahmad believes Apple likely subsidized some of the wage costs at Hon
Hai, the analyst is "fairly sure" that two other large Foxconn customers —
HP and Sony — didn't contribute, given the current "precarious situation"
both technology companies find themselves in.
Apple CEO Tim Cook touring an iPhone production line at a Foxconn plant in
Zhengzhou, China.
Foxconn Chief Executive Terry Gou revealed earlier this year that his
company and Apple would be sharing the costs to improve labor conditions at
the Chinese factories were devices like the iPhone and iPad are assembled.
But the executive did not detail how much Foxconn or Apple would be spending
to improve working conditions, or how those costs would be split.
Foxconn has been facing criticism for years as some have referred to the
electronics maker as a "sweatshop" where employees work long hours for
little pay. The company has worked to improve its image, and Apple has
encouraged those changes with a series of audits, including new independent
reviews from the Fair Labor Association.
In March the FLA announced it had found a number of violations at Foxconn,
after auditing its facilities at the request of Apple. Foxconn responded by
reducing employee working times and addressing various code violations.
And last month, a new report from the FLA suggested labor conditions at
Foxconn have improved since the audits conducted earlier this year.. The
association announced that Foxconn had corrected some 284 infractions,
including steps taken to create a safer workplace. |
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