台湾其实汇聚了不少公司，但这些公司大多没人听说过，它们给一些家喻户晓的大公司生产电子元配件。这些大公司中最有名的一个就是苹果，它选择了鸿海精密集团负责所有iPad和大部分iPhone产品的组装，也让这家台湾供应商从大大小小的公司中脱颖而出。3月27日，鸿海集团，也就是大家熟悉的富士康公司，同意以669亿日元（约合8亿800万美元）的价格收购夏普，这个落败的日本电子消费品公司，10%的股权。这也意味着鸿海集团将持有与夏普总裁Terry Gou等额的股权，而其他股东则正要购买夏普位于日本堺市的工厂93%的股权，那个工厂生产大型液晶面板。
这场难以撤销的交易标志着日本电子消费品行业的逐渐衰败和中国该行业的兴盛（鸿海位于深圳的巨型工厂组装的iPhone和iPad产品数目庞大）。鸿海集团的扩张速度快得惊人。这周它报告2011年最后3个月的收入超过了1万亿新台币（约合338亿美元），几乎比1年前多了四分之一，净利润提高了83%，达到350亿新台币。2012年刚开始，它的增长速度就已经令人瞠目结舌：1月和2月的营业收入均比去年同一时期高出50%。这很大程度上要归功于鸿海与苹果公司签订的合同，该合同为双方都带来了巨大的收益（当然，关于其工作条件的批判声也越来越高）。最近鸿海公司的一份报告中，巴克莱资本的Kirk Yang预计，今年鸿海与苹果公司合作的两个业务团队为其营业总收入作出的贡献将达39%，比2011年的34%还要高。
相比之下，夏普与日本电子产业的其他公司一样，对此已经麻木了。据称到今年3月份，夏普的营业收入将减少近六分之一，约2万6000亿日元，这意味着夏普将损失2900亿日元。夏普现在的惨境从其LCD（液晶显示屏）和LCD电视销量及价格的不断下降就可见一斑，这部分业务占其营业总收入的约40%。夏普位于堺市的工厂成立于2009年，现在该工厂的运营能力只有原先一半。Sanford C. Bernstein 是一家经纪行，该公司的Alberto Moel说郭台铭先生的出价只是当初建立该厂成本的约三分之一。既然LCD业务已经这么惨不忍睹，那鸿海集团为什么还这么急切地想要收买它？的确如此，3月28日，鸿海也承诺将给一直亏损的台湾面板制造商奇美电子股份有限公司增加注资，鸿海集团持有该公司11%的股份。它已经收购了其目前主要的LCD客户索尼公司位于墨西哥和斯洛伐克的液晶电视工厂，鸿海可能在想，凭借自己对成本的过于不敏感，它可以趁日本失败的时候获得成功。或者，它是想通过取得夏普及其堺市工厂一半的产出来实现技术上的飞跃。与中国多数制造商一样，鸿海也将面临劳动力成本的上升，尽管这一点对它们而言是最不敏感的一个因素。（杨先生认为劳动力成本只占产品销售成本的4.5%。）
收购夏普股权可能会给鸿海的重要客户带来挑战：毕竟，鸿海本可以给很多电视和个人电脑供应商继续供应液晶显示屏。然而，好像真的似的，郭先生赌了一把。他可能料想苹果会如一直传言的那样，很快也会生产电视——到那时候他和鸿海集团又要大赚一笔了！
A TAIWAN is home to a constellation of companies most people have never have heard of, making electronic gadgets and components for others with household names. The runaway success of one of these names, Apple, has made one of those Taiwanese suppliers, Hon Hai Precision Industry, the assembler of every iPad and most iPhones, less unfamiliar than the rest. On March 27th Hon Hai, which is also known as Foxconn, agreed to buy about 10% of Sharp, a struggling Japanese consumer-electronics company, for ¥66.9 billion ($808m). For a similar sum its chairman, Terry Gou, and other investors are buying half of Sharp’s 93% stake in a factory in Sakai, in Japan, that makes large liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels.
As a symbol of the decline of Japan’s consumer-electronics industry and the rise of China’s (Hon Hai puts oodles of iPhones and iPads together at a huge complex in Shenzhen), the deal is hard to beat. Hon Hai has grown at an astonishing rate. This week it said it had hauled in more than NT$1 trillion ($33.8 billion) in revenue in the last three months of 2011, almost a quarter more than a year before. Its net income rose by 83%, to NT$35 billion. It has begun 2012 at a stupefying pace: in January and February its revenue was 50% higher than in the same period last year. This owes much to Hon Hai’s contracts with Apple, which have yielded vast profits (as well as criticism about working conditions) for both. In a recent report on Hon Hai, Kirk Yang of Barclays Capital estimates that this year the firm’s two business groups making things for Apple will contribute 39% of the overall company’s revenue, up from 34% in 2011.
In sad contrast Sharp, like the rest of Japan’s electronics industry, has gone blunt. It expects that in the year to March its revenue will fall by almost one-sixth, to ¥2.6 trillion, and that it will lose ¥290 billion. Most of its troubles can be explained by declining sales and prices of LCDs and LCD televisions, which account for something like 40% of its revenue. The Sakai factory, which opened in 2009, has been running at half its capacity. Alberto Moel of Sanford C. Bernstein, a brokerage house, says that Mr Gou’s purchase values it at around a third of what it cost to build.
If LCDs have become such a miserable business, why is Hon Hai so keen to get into it? On March 28th, indeed, it also promised to pump more equity into Chimei Innolux, a lossmaking Taiwanese panel-maker of which the Hon Hai group owns 11%. It has already bought LCD television factories in Mexico and Slovakia from another Japanese company, Sony, which is now its main LCD customer. Hon Hai may think that, with its ruthless attention to costs, it can succeed where the Japanese have failed. Or it may see in Sharp and its Sakai factory, from which Hon Hai will eventually take half the output, the promise of a technological step up. Like other manufacturers in China, Hon Hai faces rising labour costs, though it is better placed than most. (Mr Yang reckons that labour accounts for only 4.5% of the cost of goods sold.) A move up the value chain may help.
The deal may also be a hedge against Hon Hai’s most important customer: after all, there are lots of television and personal-computer brands that Hon Hai could supply with LCDs. Just as plausibly, however, Mr Gou is making a bet on its continued success. He may reckon that Apple will, as has long been rumoured, soon start making televisions—and that he and Hon Hai will profit again.
