New manufacturer for Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone at Foxconn

The largest electronics’ custom manufacturer in the world, Foxconn Technology Group has recommenced hiring workers at its factory in China. A person in the know said that it is preparing to start manufacturing a new Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) (Closed: $419.85, Down by 2.32%) iPhone. There had been a total hiring freeze at the Zhengzhou, eastern China plant, in February, which has now been lifted. The person said that the existing models as well as the new devices will be assembled by the extra workers as Apple has now requested the company to boost its capacity.

Smartphone glut
Apple has been struggling to regain a foothold in the smartphone market and is hoping that the new iPhone will do the trick. Companies such as Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd (KRX: 005930) (Closed: 1,529,000 KRW, Up by 0.39%) and HTC Corp (TPE:2498) (Closed:$264.00, Up by 2.33%) will all be launching new smartphones and Apple doesn’t want to be left behind. In the quarter that ended March, Apple will be posting its poorest sales since 2009. In the December quarter, the iPhone-maker had posted record shipments of the device.

Large-scale hiring
Foxconn’s Zengzhou facility employs close to 250,000-300,000 people. The company spokesperson, Liu Kun has not revealed the exact number of workers that have been added. He declined comments on the clients and the products. There was no comment from Apple’s Beijing-based spokesperson Carolyn Wu either. The wall Street Journal had reported that since the end of March, Foxconn had been hiring 10,000 assembly line workers per week. According to the supplier list published by Apple in January, the Foxconn flagship Hon Hai Precision Industry Co manufactures iPhones in Zhengzhou. Jundiai, Taiyuan and Shenzhen are some of the other locations where this device is manufactured.

In the first financial quarter of 2013, Apple made a record sale of 47.8 million iPhones. The iPhone 5 had been released in the previous quarter. In the second fiscal quarter the sales were the slowest and rose to $42.6 billion after climbing by 8.8 percent. On April 10, the largest smartphone-maker in the world, Samsung, will be launching its Galaxy S4 in the United States and by April 30 HTC’s “One” will be launched in Europe, North America and Asia.