See if this scenario sounds familiar: A longtime Apple manufacturing partner looks to move away from its dependence on the company and focus more on creating its own products that it can sell at higher margins. While this has certainly been the story of Samsung’s success over the past couple of years, a new report from The New York Times suggests that iPhone manufacturer Foxconn may be drawing up a similar path for itself by designing and manufacturing its own brand of televisions while also inching itself away from depending on Apple as its major source of income.
The Times says that Foxconn’s “new strategy is a shift away from making products that other companies design, and toward developing products of its own, with an especially aggressive push into designing and manufacturing large, flat-screen televisions.” The good news for Apple, then, is that Foxconn for the time being isn’t looking to become a direct competitor as Samsung did when it started producing its own high-end smartphones and tablets to take on Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
All the same, Foxconn’s decision to go it alone for some of its own products is due in part to the perception that “the Apple aura isn’t as invincible as before,” Gartner analyst Jamie Wang tells the Times. And although Apple and Foxconn aren’t direct competitors at the moment that could change quickly if Apple ever gives the green light to produce its long-rumored “iTV” that has reportedly been on the cusp of release for several years now.
