Foxconn buys Belkin, Linksys and Wemo for $866m

[fergusonnn]

 

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The Taiwanese company known best for manufacturing iPhones, Foxconn, will soon be the company behind some of the best known routers and other computer accessories. A subsidiary of Foxconn, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, announced today that it would acquire Belkin, which also owns the brands Linksys and Wemo.

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Foxconn will pay $866 million in cash to acquire Belkin. The Financial Times notes that the purchase should be subject to approval from the US Committee on Foreign Investment, meaning it isn’t a done deal just yet. Given that there have been other high profile foreign acquisitions shut down under the Trump administration, one shouldn’t consider this purchase safe — especially since it involves networking equipment. That said, Foxconn has pledged to build a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, which could help it stay on the administration’s good side.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/26/17166272/foxconn-buys-belkin-fit-linksys-wemo

Sounds like Foxconn wants to get away from being a "behind the scenes" manufacturer and wants to try to bring their products straight to the market. They also mentioned that this would sort of be an "insurance policy" if Apple decides to change partners or the popularity of the iPhone falls off. Since Belkin and Linksys are already well known in the consumer technology world, this sounds like a perfect fit. Will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of their products.. it was nice to personally see Linksys bring back a quality product (at least to my standard) with the WRT1900 wireless router/AP's.

(And you'll have to excuse me for sounding sluggish.. first time finding a news topic to post here, so I hope I didn't goof up too hard)

[Guest]

Imagine if Foxconn bought all the companies they already manufacture components for. That'd be insane.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

fox who?

[leadeater]

20 minutes ago, Densetsu said:

Imagine if Foxconn bought all the companies they already manufacture components for. That'd be insane.

So almost everyone then lol.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

So almost everyone then lol.

That's why I found it so funny when people were trying to demand Apple stop using them.

I'm like okay, but your next tablet would be a literal stone tablet if everyone stopped using them.

[Misanthrope]

Wait didn't Cisco owned Linksys? I am confused.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, fergusonnn said:

Will be interesting to see how this affects the quality of their products.. it was nice to personally see Linksys bring back a quality product (at least to my standard) with the WRT1900 wireless router/AP's.

Considering Foxconn was already manufacturing them, I'd be surprised if any real changes to manufacturing quality/QA happen.

 

In terms of the software side they're Chinese so I doubt they'll revive the WRT lineup at the same level it was before. Can always hope though.

 

4 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Wait didn't Cisco owned Linksys? I am confused.

They sold Linksys off a few years back. (2013)

[Arika]

Belkin: overpriced cables and accessories

Linksys: decent routers

Wemo: part of Belkin

 

what a strange acquisition

[NumLock21]

1 hour ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

fox who?

Foxconn, largest OEM out there. Almost every board out there will have some components made by Foxconn, like the cpu socket, ram slots, pcie slots, to the back I/O ports. They also sell their own motherboards.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, Densetsu said:

That's why I found it so funny when people were trying to demand Apple stop using them.

I'm like okay, but your next tablet would be a literal stone tablet if everyone stopped using them.

I believe that Amazon is prohibited from using Foxconn for manufacturing their devices due to Google Android BS licensing.

 

They found a way around it though.

 

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Members of the Open Handset Alliance, which include the majority of Android OEMs, are also contractually forbidden from producing Android devices based on forks of the OS;^[87][265]

 

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in 2012, Acer Inc. was forced by Google to halt production on a device powered by Alibaba Group's Aliyun OS with threats of removal from the OHA, as Google deemed the platform to be an incompatible version of Android. Alibaba Group defended the allegations, arguing that the OS was a distinct platform from Android (primarily using HTML5 apps), but incorporated portions of Android's platform to allow backwards compatibility with third-party Android software.

Source: Wikipedia