Foxconn to manufacture masks amid coronavirus epidemic

Fii made an announcement on Friday that the masks will be first used to protect some 1 million Foxconn employees from infection before being provided to others outside the company, Xinhua news agency has reported.

The company has built production lines to make masks in Shenzhen's Hualong plant and expects to reach a daily capacity of 2 million by the end of February.

Meanwhile, Foxconn is also set to keep its factories shut for at least another week in the wake of the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the country, the media reported earlier this week.

This comes at a time when smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung have shut their offices and stores in the country following the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak.

Foxconn has stopped "almost all" of its production in China until February 10 at the earliest due to the Coronavirus outbreak. A lengthy stoppage could substantially disrupt Foxconn clients, the most visible being Apple, from shipping devices to customers, The Verge had reported on Tuesday.

Notably, Wistron will begin assembling printed circuit board (PCBs) for Apple iPhones in India, said a report earlier this week.

According to reliable sources, the assembling of PCBs would begin at Taiwanese manufacturer's new iPhone plant near Bengaluru.

The move is also seen as to slowly end dependency on China for component manufacturing, currently under a lockdown owing to the novel coronavirus that has claimed hundreds of lives.

Samsung Electronics Co. will temporarily shut down its flagship store in China amid growing fears of the spread of the novel coronavirus, company officials had announced on Monday.

According to market researcher Strategy Analytics, global shipments of smartphones may be 2 per cent less than expected this year because of the Coronavirus outbreak in China.

The world's number two economy makes 70 per cent of all smartphones sold on the planet.