Apple manufacturer, Foxconn, is set to replace half of its workforce with robots, reported The Observer. The company, which makes iPhones, iPods and iPads as well as select products for Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Google and Nintendo, has sacked around 60,000 of the 1,10,000 employees at a factory in Taiwan. Though the company confirmed the layoffs, they have not mentioned an given exact figure yet.
“[Foxconn] has tasted success in reduction of labor costs. More companies are likely to follow suit,” Xu Yulian, head of the Kunshan government’s publicity department said, according to the British newspaper. Kunshan in Jiansu province is a manufacturing hub for electronics. As many as 35 companies in the country invested over four billon Yuan (over $610 million) on artificial intelligence in 2015.
“Across all of our facilities today, we are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees,” Foxconn said.
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