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Foxconn Announces Purchase of Belkin, Wemo, and Linksys (androidpolice.com)
Foxconn, the Taiwan-based company best-known for manufacturing Apple products announced that one of its subsidiaries (Foxconn Interconnect Technology) is purchasing U.S.-based Belkin for $866 million in cash. "Belkin owns a number of major brands, including Linksys and Wemo," notes Android Police. From the report: The buyout would make Foxconn a major player in consumer electronics, instead of just a contract manufacturing company. Belkin primarily sells phone/tablet accessories, but also manufactures networking equipment like routers and Wi-Fi range extenders. The company also sells a range of smart home products under the Wemo brand. According to The Financial Times, the purchase is subject to approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment. In other words, there is a very real chance the acquisition could be blocked. President Trump blocked Broadcom's acquisition of Qualcomm earlier this month, based on advice from the committee.
Taiwan is not China. The gear is made on the mainland, sure, but it is an entire functioning country of its own (with quite a negative opinion of the Peopleâ(TM)s Republic). Thereâ(TM)s not a hell of a lot of difference between a Taiwanese firm making kit in China than a South Korean firm or a Japanese firm, or even a US brand, contracting out their build to China.
You're thinking of Hong Kong; Taiwan/Formosa's statehood is complex, but it's essentially been an autonomous nation since 1912. The key point here though is that the ROC is an entirely separate entity to the PRC on the mainland so it's not *quite* the same as the blocked Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm. Going to be interesting to see how Trump handles this given the whole "One China Policy" though; the RPC Chinese are already sensitive about the trade issues, so one mis-tweet could easily exacerbate the political situation further.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Well, no, not really. It was autonomous until the Qing dynasty annexed it in the 19th century. It was ceded to Japan in 1895, who ruled it as a colony until 1945. It was then given to the then ruling government of China, the Republic of China (which was indeed founded in 1912 with the fall of the Qing). When the ROC was defeated by the communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the ROC government fled to Taiwan where the communists couldn't get at them. For a long time, both the ROC and the communists claimed to be the legitimate government of all China and thus Taiwan was not classified as an independent nation; both sides agreed it was part of China. They just disagreed on who was the rightful rulers of China. Technically this is still the case, but in fact the ROC has not been terribly interested in claiming back China in decades. However, the communists react very violently to any suggestion that Taiwan establish itself as a independent country because they figure that as long as the argument is over who controls China they can't lose; Taiwan must eventually become theirs. Independence is a fight they could conceivably lose if they let the fight move to that ground.
The Chinese are realising they don't need the Western middleman with the suit and tie, the slick haircut, the cheesy grin, the belly, the chauffeur, the glass of wine, the McMansion with his smooth talk about "going forward", "push the envelope", "move the goalposts" and "quid pro quo basis" in order to sell stuff to people living in the west.
Time was when the said parasitic Western middleman thought he was clever by closing the factory doors back home and moving production to China, but in the long term he was only the architect of his own demise, playing into the hands of the Chinese all along.
Unfortunately such is the scale of the problem of all these like-minded smooth-talking Western businessmen who have done absolutely f*ck all but attend meetings for since the late 1970s that the populations of the US of A, Ireland, UK and pretty much the rest of Europe and North America as well have become utterly inept at making basic provisions for everyday life and are completely dependent on the Chinese for simple things like 10k through-hole resistors, matches, cotton wool buds and have therefore set the stage to allow the Chinese to come into all these countries to buy their remaining successful businesses, natural resources and real estate just so the white middle-aged smooth talking businessmen with their talk about key performance indicators can sit and their arse and do nothing for another decade or so.
Baja California is part of California, and Trump should invade.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
crappy bug laden products are now going to be even crappier bug laden products.
2013 called, they want their Belkin purchase of Linksys back.