Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, Aug. 25 (Xinhua)-- Wentai Technology, a mobile phone contract manufacturer, is vigorously recruiting workers for its Kunming factory, reflecting the company's huge ambitions. Wentai has quietly built up its manufacturing capacity to supply domestic brands and is now looking to further break into the supply chains of global giants such as Apple and Samsung.

Driving 40 kilometers south from Kunming, recruiters at Wentai Technology are busy recruiting tens of thousands of workers for the company's expanded plant, which the company hopes will eventually supply Apple with products.

"We are actively recruiting. For the second phase of the project alone, we initially thought we needed to recruit about 15000 workers, but we have just learned that the recruitment target will increase to more than 20,000," said one recruiter. "my colleagues and I are conducting activities in many cities and schools in Yunnan and are working with local governments to recruit more workers."

Wentai Science and Technology Kunming Factory is located at the bottom of the plateau at an altitude of 1920 meters. Recruiters quoted Wentai's plan as saying that the plant would eventually employ at least 30,000 workers, up from just a few thousand at present. The Kunming factory, which covers an area of more than 427000 square meters, equivalent to 80 football fields, has produced tens of billions of yuan worth of smartphones and other products for domestic companies such as vivo and OPPO since it began operation in July last year. Currently under construction is the second phase of the Kunming Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, with a total investment of about 3 billion yuan, which will produce laptops and smartphones.

The rapid rise of industry insiders said that the rise of Wentai technology is astonishing. It was only less than a year ago that Wentai began supplying Apple with the acquisition of OfeiPhoton Guangzhou Delta Imaging Technology Co., Ltd., which has grown to produce Apple's Mac mini desktops. The company recently won an order to produce the older generation of Macbook (rumored to be MacBook Air) at its Kunming plant, according to three people familiar with the matter. Given Apple's notoriously stringent quality standards, this achievement is impressive.

"Wentai Technology is one of the few Chinese technology suppliers praised by Apple for its rapid technological progress, and it is really a rising star that we should not ignore." Said an executive at an Apple supplier.

At present, the Macbook is one of the most advanced consumer notebooks on the market. Their production has long been dominated by Quanta computer, a contract manufacturer in Taiwan, and Foxconn. Although other well-known Taiwanese contract manufacturers such as Compal and Wittronic have supplied Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo for decades, they have never received an order for the Apple iconic laptop. Several industry sources said Wentai Technology was already producing notebooks for Samsung, Lenovo and Asustek.

"if Wentai can regularly obtain production orders from MacBook in the future, then the technology supply chain will be very surprised because it is not so easy to produce MacBook, which involves a lot of components and assembly technologies," an executive at MacBook supply chain told.

Wentai Technology, which relies on overseas acquisitions to acquire manufacturing technology, has seized on Apple's trend of cooperating with more Chinese suppliers in recent years. Such as Lixun Precision, Gale shares and BYD. In order to improve its manufacturing technology to the level required by Apple, it has also made a large number of overseas acquisitions.

Wentai bought Enshi, a chipmaker, from NXP in 2019, and then bought the UK's largest chip factory through Enshi in 2021. It also acquired four subsidiaries of Ofeiguang, a former Apple supplier, to acquire proprietary technology for making optical components and camera modules. With the help of Anshi Semiconductor, Wentai also has chip packaging and testing facilities in Guangdong, the Philippines and Malaysia, and its equipment and components are manufactured in China, Japan, India and Indonesia.

Wentai also plans to build a chip factory in Kunming. In late July, the company registered a subsidiary in Shanghai with a paid-up capital of 20 million yuan, which will include electronic equipment and chip manufacturing, according to the enterprise data platform.

Experts say this combination of domestic and overseas activities has paid off. "Wentai has risen rapidly because it has an excellent base for leading smartphone manufacturers to nurture its own business and acquire know-how, and to enhance its capabilities by acquiring chip and electronic component suppliers for vertical integration in the supply chain." Nomura Securities technology industry analyst Teng Xianan said.

Entering the high-margin business Wentai now aims to expand beyond smartphone assembly into more profitable areas.

"Wentai has recently become more focused on new areas such as optics and camera components, semiconductors and the cockpit of smart cars," said Ivan Lam, an analyst at market research firm Counterpoint Research. "it wants to get rid of the low-end, unprofitable smartphone assembly business. It certainly wants to work with international brands such as Apple and Samsung, because serving these big companies can help it hone its technology."

However, Mr Teng believes that serving global brands could mean building capacity outside China. Apple, Samsung and other international customers are now looking to diversify their production bases to reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions.

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