Taiwan Tech Giant Foxconn’s 2024 Profit Misses Forecasts 

The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
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Taiwan Tech Giant Foxconn’s 2024 Profit Misses Forecasts 

The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)

Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn reported on Friday a lower-than-expected net profit for 2024 as consumer electronic gadgets underperformed, although demand for its artificial intelligence servers remained robust.

The world's largest contract electronics manufacturer has been moving beyond assembling devices such as Apple's iPhones into areas ranging from electric vehicles to AI servers.

The company said full-year net profit rose seven percent to NT$152.7 billion (US$4.6 billion).

That compares with an average forecast of NT$159.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

Full-year revenue rose 11 percent to NT$6.9 trillion, beating the market forecast of NT$6.8 trillion.

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, has been riding a wave of global demand for generative AI in recent years.

The company reported a "strong performance" in its AI server business, with revenue up 150 percent, according to documents released ahead of an earnings call with analysts.

This year would be the "Year of AI", the company said, with shipments increasing in every quarter.

The earnings announcement comes as US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs against major trading partners including China, Canada and Mexico, igniting trade wars and causing markets to fall.

While Foxconn has plants around the world, the bulk of its operations is based in China, which has been hit by 20 percent levies on products shipped to the United States.

Foxconn is building a mega-AI server plant in Mexico, which a local official told Bloomberg recently would be completed in a year despite Trump's tariff threats.

The $900 million assembly plant near Guadalajara will become the world's largest to be powered by Nvidia's GB200 AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro said.

Foxconn has also been in the spotlight over potential cooperation with Japanese automaker Nissan after its merger talks with rival Honda fell through in February.

Chairman Young Liu said previously that Foxconn was open to buying French auto giant Renault's stake in Nissan and was looking into a cooperation with Nissan, not a merger.

Foxconn has been looking to expand into the Japanese EV market and Liu said last month the company would announce "good news" in EVs within one or two months.



Google Will Pay Texas $1.4 Billion to Settle Claims the Company Collected Users’ Data without Permission

A Google logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, November 1, 2018. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, November 1, 2018. (Reuters)
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Google Will Pay Texas $1.4 Billion to Settle Claims the Company Collected Users’ Data without Permission

A Google logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, November 1, 2018. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, November 1, 2018. (Reuters)

Google will pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle claims the company collected users' data without permission, the state’s attorney general announced Friday.

Attorney General Ken Paxton described the settlement as sending a message to tech companies that he will not allow them to make money off of “selling away our rights and freedoms.”

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won.”

The agreement settles several claims Texas made against the search giant in 2022 related to geolocation, incognito searches and biometric data. The state argued Google was “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data.”

Paxton claimed, for example, that Google collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, through such products and services as Google Photos and Google Assistant.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the agreement settles an array of “old claims,” some of which relate to product policies the company has already changed.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services,” he said in a statement.

The company also clarified that the settlement does not require any new product changes.

Paxton said the $1.4 billion is the largest amount won by any state in a settlement with Google over this type of data-privacy violations.

Texas previously reached two other key settlements with Google within the last two years, including one in December 2023 in which the company agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store.

Meta has also agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas in a privacy lawsuit over allegations that the tech giant used users' biometric data without their permission.