Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn has put a hiring freeze in place at its factories, sparking speculation that the production of the iPhone 5 has begun to slow, and triggering a fall in share price. However, a Foxconn spokesperson has now denied these rumours.
A Financial Times report published on Wednesday claimed that the recruitment freeze was put in place across Foxconn factories in China as the company slows down the production of Apple's iPhone 5.
The FT cited human resources, local government officials and external recruiters in its report, who apparently said that internal notices had been sent out within Foxconn on Tuesday and Wednesday that ordered a hiring halt until the end of March at the earliest because of reduced iPhone 5 orders.
A source said that stopping hires for one month could see the headcount at Foxconn fall by tens of thousands if its turnover of workers remained as high as 2012.
Later on Wednesday, Foxconn spokesperson Bruce Liu contradicted the FT's report during an interview with Bloomberg, claiming that the hiring freeze was in fact due to a larger number of workers returning from the Chinese New Year break than expected.
However, the FT's report claims that, while a spokesperson from Foxconn's Shenzhen factory, Liu Kun, said that 97 per cent of the company's workers had returned to their jobs after Chinese New Year, a second spokesperson from the human resources team at the Taiyuan plant said that almost a third of the workers there hadn't come back.
The news of the Foxconn hiring freeze, despite contradicting reports about the cause, has led to a 2.4 per cent decline in share price due to concern about a decreasing demand for Apple's smartphones with competition from rivals such as Samsung hotting up.
See also:
Einhorn wants AAPL investors to join his 'why you want preferred stock' conference call today
The Apple stock suit: What it all means
Apple working on Retina MacBook Air?
Steve Wozniak: 'Apple is losing its cool, but I'd welcome an iWatch'
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Comments received
ttreen said on Fri, 22 Feb 2013
All this shows is how desperate so-called analysts are to be seen to be worth their remuneration, and how arbitrary and illogical the stock markets can be.
Share price rises and falls frequently have absolutely bugger all to do with the underlying strengths of the company involved.
Rumour & innuendo - now that's a different matter; and they're frequently engineered by those with their own agenda.
A plague and a pox on all 'analysts'. I don't know of one who I'd value at more than £10k per annum!
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