Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn has said it will replace some of its workers in the next three years, replacing them with 1 million robots.
The company, most notably known for manufacturing iOS products among thousands of other devices, has 995,000 employees in the Chinese mainland, and another 200,000 elsewhere.
By replacing human workers with robots, the company will curb rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, says chairman Terry Gou (via xinhuanet).
Foxconn has been in the news in the past year due to a string of suicides by workers.
Average line workers at the factory make about 900 yuan ($140 USD) per month.
Result for: News
According to BI, Yahoo would be willing to purchase on-demand streaming TV service Hulu for $2 billion, as long as certain demands are met.
Hulu is owned by Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Comcast (NBCU) and private equity firm Providence.
Yahoo is only willing to make the deal if Hulu guarantees them 4-5 years of exclusive access to the media content.
Hulu, on the other hand, seems to be only willing to give 2 years of exclusivity, albeit with 5 years guaranteed access to the content.
Says one source:
If [Hulu's content creating owners] came out and said, we’ve renewed [Hulu's exclusive rights] for four years at the same terms we have today – it’s really easy to model [a valuation between] $1 billion and $2 billion – maybe more.
Without four or five years of exclusive streaming rights to TV shows and movies, Hulu is not worth anything.
If Hulu does offer 5 year exclusivity, Yahoo would have enough time to “build enough equity with consumers that you’ve created a real leader in premium content and premium advertising,” adds the source.
Without exclusivity, Yahoo (and other bidders) could simply just bid for the rights to stream the content in the future, as it would cost significantly less. In fact, when the exclusivity period for Hulu’s current content ends, Google and Amazon are expected to bid hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights.
Result for: News
AOL is prepared to cut up to 20 percent of its global workforce, this week, with as many as 900 people losing there jobs.
The company will cut 400 jobs in India and 200 in the U.S., while outsourcing another 300 to other companies.
At its peak during the tech bubble, AOL had 20,000 employees. After this week, the company will have just over 4000.
Says CEO Tim Armstrong (via Reuters):
We want to go from taking arrows to catching arrows. Today is a difficult one for our company.
AOL will turn around.
AOL just completed its massive $315 million acquisition of The Huffington Post news site.
