It's been a busy day for tech acquisitions: first, Acer ponied up to acquire Gateway, which in turn was rumored to be interested in Packard Bell, and now we're hearing rumors that Quanta and Hon Hai, two of the biggest device manufacturers around, are ready to tie the knot. The rumor's actually been floating around for a while -- long enough for Hon Hai to have denied it several times -- but Quanta's CEO, Michael Wang, resigned over the weekend, in part because he disagreed with the acquisition plan. Hon Hai (also known as FoxConn) is probably best known for manufacturing the iPod, but the company isn't particularly strong in the laptop segment, where Quanta is the clear leader. Nothing's been announced yet, but it's a dramatic time in the Asian ODM world -- stay tuned.

[Via BloggingStocks]

Not too many details on this one just yet, but it appears that Hon Hai has applied for FCC certification on a mysterious HP handheld. The PDA, which touts a model number of HSTNH-F16C, offers up Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and WiFi (802.11b/g) capabilities, USB 2.0 connectivity, and apparently comes with a lovely slip case (pictured) "to protect it from scraping." Unfortunately, that's where the secrecy takes over, as we're left to ponder what type of processor, display, etc. could possibly be coming to this newfangled device. As always, stay tuned for details.

Ready for some good ol' rumor and speculation related to the iPhone? Sure, after all, we're still a few weeks away from the most optimistic of launch dates. Well, try this one on. A second iPhone manufacturer has been added to the mix. Namely, Apple fave Quanta Computer are rumored to be joining Foxconn (Hon Hai) in the development of the uber phone after winning the contract to deliver 5 million units starting in September. Digitimes, citing a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times, says that "The iPhone produced by Foxconn is designated for the US market, and those manufactured by Quanta will be similar in function to those from Foxconn but with a different outer design to fit different markets, the paper quoted sources at Taiwan-based component makers as saying." The story was also carried by Taiwan's other leading financial paper, the Economic Daily News for what it's worth. Quanta has issued a response to the rumor on their English language site stating, "Quanta and Apple are building a tighter than ever relationships. Quanta not only manufactures NB and iPod for Apple, but also may have receive the order to make the second generation of the Apple iPhone. iPhone is a smartphone based mobile, and the second generation model shipment is expected in September 2007 with forecast of 5 million units in 2008." What to make of this? Well, the believers amongst you will of course interpret this to mean a 3G iPhone is on the way -- after all, Apple would be testing European patience by delivering a 3G-less phone to the continent in Q4 as originally announced. But that's just speculation on top of rumor which makes an ass out of you and me. Er, or something like that.

Read -- DigiTimes
Read -- Quanta response

Big, big week for gadget news (as we all well know). The Zune, the PS3, and the Wii, it's been pretty crazed around the hallowed halls of Engadget HQ. We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the news surrounding the gadgets since something tells us a lot of you are wondering what they're like, and whether you should buy one. We also briefly touch on some other noteworthy announcements, including the Lenovo X60, Nikon D40, the Core 2 Duo MacBook, and those sweet new Cingular Windows Mobile devices. It's going to be a hell of a holiday season this year.

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0:52:54 - Hon Hai cops to iPhone contract
0:56:02 - Apple's MacBook goes Core 2 Duo, too
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It looks like a certain little Taiwanese manufacturer is going to get a stern talking to pretty soon from our pal Stevie J. Just last month, Han Hai (aka Foxconn) spilled the beans in regards to a 15-inch MacBook, and while of course nothing has been confirmed by the suits at Apple, that rumor has been reiterated by this juicy new iPhone story. Apparently Hon Hai has now secured a contract with Apple to manufacture 12 million mobile handsets with music player functionality, sez the Commercial Times. The phone (which sounds like an iPhone if we ever heard of one) is purportedly set to launch in the first half of next year, giving rise to hopes that Apple will announce the handset at Macworld Expo in January. As for the MacBook,contrary to the May 2007 ship date we heard for the 15-inch MacBooks earlier, Hon Hai could be delivering these things as early as next month.

[Thanks, Dave Z.]

After folding under public (and perhaps governmental) pressure and reducing the damages it was seeking against two Chinese journalists from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents), Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry has now wised up and dropped the libel suit altogether. As a quick review (though we doubt that you need one), Hon Hai took legal action against China Business News' Wang You and Weng Boa following their report on the much-publicized working conditions at the Foxconn plant lovingly dubbed "iPod City," asking for compensation amounting to many times the reporters' annual salaries and convincing a court to temporarily freeze their assets. The PR nightmare ended on Sunday when Hon Hai chose not to pursue the case any further, according to China's official Xinhua news agency, and was capped off with a mutual apology between the firm and newspaper for all the trouble that the lawsuit had caused. In an encouraging sign that this method of dispute settlement may actually be gaining ground elsewhere in the world, TiVo followed the announcement by sending a bouquet of flowers to Echostar, NTP decided to return the $612 million it won from RIM inside a Hallmark greeting card, and Shannon Derrik and Stephanie Eick (the iPod lawsuit girls) realized after a mediated tea party that they wanted to forgo the legal silliness and go back to being BFFs.

So, we're not sure how much bargaining power unions have in a Communist country, but much to our surprise, the Chinese provincial government of Shenzhen has actually demanded that Hon Hai Precision Industry allow its "iPod City" workers to unionize. Unlike American unions, which are generally organized by trade, the Chinese versions are company-specific, and must be affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (or ACFTU) -- a body that has repeatedly been accused of colluding with management and security personnel in breaking up employee-led protests. You might think that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions -- which had criticized Apple's investigation and subsequent report concerning working conditions at the Foxconn plant -- would be pleased with this development, but actually it argues that the ACFTU, as a non-independent body, "cannot be regarded as an authentic voice of Chinese workers." So in the end, are the Foxconn laborers really any better off now than they were before that Daily Mail article initiated this whole series of events? In reality, probably a little, but not much -- yes there may be some cutbacks in their hours and the dormitories may be a little cleaner, but until China as a whole is able to upgrade everyone's standard of living, the lives of workers in iPod City and countless plants like it will unfortunately remain mostly unchanged.

[Via Reuters]

It's tough work running the multi-billion dollar industrial powerhouse that is Hon Hai Precision Industry. First you get slammed with damning accusations about working conditions at your iPod-producing Foxconn plant, and like any responsible corporate citizen, you completely deny the allegations and threaten legal action against the "conspirators" responsible for slandering you. Then, even after you've admitted to some labor law violations and an outside investigation by Apple confirms these as well as other breaches in its supplier code of conduct, you somehow think the best course of action is to still sue the Chinese journalists who covered the story in order to make their lives a living hell. Well once again good old Hon Hai has admitted that it dropped the ball on this one, citing "great public attention on the target of the injunction" as the reason that it both drastically reduced the damages it was seeking from $3.8 million to a symbolic one yuan (12 cents) and withdrew its request to freeze Wang You's and Weng Bao's personal assets. So in other words, the leaders of iPod City didn't so much regret the suit as they did the public outcry that followed -- yet another example of media pressure shaming big business into doing the right thing. Hmm, now where did we just hear about a similar sequence of events happening in the United States? No matter -- power to the people!

[Via Techdirt]

Apparently the world of motherboard manufacturing is a whole lot more political than you'd guess, and this new joint venture between motherboard giant Asustek and its smaller competitor Gigabyte has more twists and turns in it than an episode of The West Wing. They're going halvsies on a new company to produce lower-end motherboards in competition with rising star Hon Hai, which recently shot to number 2 in the motherboard world. The NT$8 billion venture ($244 million USD) is simultaneously an effort by Asustek to drop a competitor (Gigabyte) and a method of cost savings for Gigabyte, since production will likely be outsourced to Asustek. Gigabyte's motherboard and graphics card biz will be wholly swallowed by the new venture, and they'll hold 51 percent of the company, while concentrating on phones and other such devices with their Gigabyte brand. There, confused yet?

[Via The Inquirer]

Despite recent comments by a Foxconn spokesperson that Apple had already investigated and found no problems with the Chinese factory that has come to be known as "iPod City," BusinessWeek is reporting that the probe is still in fact underway, with an Apple representative reiterating that the company takes "allegations of noncompliance very seriously." According to spokesperson Steve Dowling, Apple is in the midst of a "thorough audit" of the Hon Hai-owned plant, which had recently admitted to breaking labor laws concerning overtime, but which continues to deny other allegations contained in the original Daily Mail exposé. Specifically, Dowling says that the auditors are looking into "employee working and living conditions," conducting interviews with workers and their managers (separately, we hope), and generally making sure that the factory lives up to a supplier code of conduct that supposedly "sets the bar higher than accepted industry standards." This is all very good news indeed, but now Apple faces yet another hurdle in the form of a jaded public highly skeptical of corporate-speak, meaning that whether the investigation turns up violations or not, the company may still have a hard time convincing folks to accept the auditors' final verdict.

[Via AppleInsider, image courtesy of Mail on Sunday]

In what would seem to be a 180-degree reversal from last week's vehement denials concerning the Daily Mail's "iPod City" exposé, Hon Hai Precision Industry's Foxconn factory has now come forward to admit that it has indeed been in violation of Chinese labor laws. Even though the company -- which was accused of underpaying and overworking employees -- had initially threatened to take legal action over the story, ChinaCSR is now reporting that a Foxconn spokesperson has publicly copped to the fact that its workers are forced to be on duty an extra 80 hours a month, which is 44 more hours of overtime than Chinese regulations allow (or 1.5 to 2 extra hours per day depending on the length of their work week). On the plus side, company representative Li Zong did point out that the workers are being paid according the minimum salary standards of the Shenzhen local government, so at least all those extra hours will help them maintain the highest standard of living for the scant amount of free time they get to spend in their overcrowded dormitories (supposedly pictured above). We realize that a lot of people are arguing that it's not fair to single out Apple when this is an industry-wide problem, but the fact of the matter is that Apple has been called out, and this new revelation only makes it that much more important for the company to conduct its promised investigation in a thorough and open manner.

Update: It should also be noted that the ChinaCSR article quotes Li as saying that "Apple has sent a special team to investigate, but has found no problem with Foxconn." While it's not clear when this investigation took place, we're hoping that Apple has more to say on the matter, because it sounds more than a little shady if Cupertino gave Foxconn the thumbs-up while these admitted violations were occuring.

[Via The Inquirer]

Apple's promise to investigate "iPod City" allegations wasn't quite the flat-out denial we were expecting for a situation like this, but the accused iPod manufacturer, Foxconn Electronics (aka Hon Hai Precision Industry), was a little more straight forward. Spokesman Edmund Ding stated that there were huge discrepancies between the truth and the claims in the report, and that Foxconn reserves the right to take legal action over the report. A couple notable facts include Ding's claim that Foxconn has a worldwide workforce of about 160,000 -- compared to the 200,000 in one factory claimed by the report. Foxconn's website has also denied them even having a factory in Suzhou, which was mentioned as an "iPod City" in the accusatory article. Ding was also careful to mention that Foxconn abides by the employment law of China for minimum wage, and has been actively making improvements to workers' living conditions with the addition of free laundry service, sports facilities, libraries and other facilities. We're sure we haven't heard the last of the plight of iPod workers, but at least according to their employer it doesn't really sound too terrible.

[Via iLounge]

Read - Foxconn denies allegations
Read - No iPod city in Sozhou

What can we say -- iPod rumors are a hot commodity, and we find it quite tantalizing when the Chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. -- one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world and an Apple contractor on iPod manufacturing -- starts talking about Apple's next player. According to a Bloomberg report, Chairman Terry Gou said, "Apple is about to unveil the next generation of iPod, the best-selling music player in the U.S., using a 'none-touch' concept." Ok, well, how much of that is paraphrased and lost in translation is yet to be seen, but before we take that "none-touch" concept business away and start dissecting it (obviously we're totally hoping it's a brain-interface that doesn't require touching the precious, easily-scratched surface), we'd like to at least hone in on that bit about Apple getting ready to unveil the next iPod shortly. Enjoy, fanboys and haters.