It's so interesting that Apple is portrayed as the reason for hiring freeze out of all these companies:
Acer Inc.
Amazon.com
Apple Inc.
Cisco
Dell
Google
Hewlett-Packard
Microsoft
Motorola Mobility
Nintendo
Nokia
Sony
Toshiba
Vizio
These are all customers of Foxconn. Are they saying the iPhone 5 even keeps these other companies in business to require the need for the employees they have now?
Go.
Good point. Apple is responsable for 9-14% of manufacture, up to 15% of turnover for Foxconn. Out of that, the iPhone5 is 1, maybe 2%. There are still about the same numbers of 4S and 4 being build. So, this 2% of manufacturing capacity should be responsible for a hiring freeze?
And the introduction of the first 30000 robots (out of a planed 1M) has also nothing to do with it. The massive decline in Dell computers, the loss of Samsung manufacture to there own factories (smaller hands) the reduction by 50% of Surface Tablets, the virtual standstill in Sony Playstations (all made in whole or in part by Foxconn) is not a contributing factor?
So the company comes out and explains even why there is no relation to the iPhone5, a tiny blob in the grand picture of 1.2 million Fosconn employees, and still someone tries to make a story about it? Is there no real news?