Last week a man at the Foxconn plant committed suicide because an iPhone prototype went missing. Foxconn is a manufacturing plant that builds gadgets for Nintendo, HP, and Apple. Due to the man killing himself over an incident that took place at work, the company will be giving compensation to his family. The suicidal man’s family will receive $52,600 plus $4,000 per year afterwards. The man’s girlfriend was also given an Apple laptop.
Twenty five year old Sun Danyong jumped off a high-rise apartment in South China last week after executives at Foxconn questioned him about where an iPhone prototype had gone missing. Sun was responsible for sending the phone to Apple. Critics have also blamed this incident on Apple’s devotion to secrecy on all of their products until release date.
Foxconn’s suspended security chief Gu Qinming admitted to once grabbing Sun by the shoulder, but denied ever beating him. Before committing suicide, Sun claimed that security at Foxconn had beat and abused him.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg also reported that 45 out of 83 of Apple’s factories in China did not pay adequate overtime pay. Twenty three of those factories paid workers less than minimum wage. Apple has been working on ensuring fairer practices to their factory workers overseas.
A 25 year old worker at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn killed himself last week after a 4G iPhone prototype he was responsible for went missing. He jumped off a 12 story building. Foxconn is one of Apple’s manufacturing partner in China. The company manufactures iPhones and iPods for Apple.
Sun Danyong, the man who killed himself, was responsible for 16 iPhone prototype models. When one of the models went missing, company security supposedly used inappropriate interrogation methods to find out where the phone went. Methods such as searching his house and holding him in solitary confinement were used.
Apple likes to keep things secret. So the company’s suppliers, partners, and employees are under great pressure to keep new products secret.
Just like the creatures that Ugobe Inc. models their toys after, the company may go extinct. Ugobe makes the Pleo dinosaur robotic toy. It received a lot of media coverage back in 2003 when the toy was first released. Caleb Chung, inventor of the Furby founded Ugobe. The Furby sold about 50 million units in the 90’s.
The Pleo sells for $350 which was too high for consumers. In 2008, Ugobe made about $19.2 million in revenue, but that dropped to $209,000 in the first quarter of 2009. The Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed in Idaho where the company is based. The company moved from Emeryville to Idaho last year. Ugobe has $1.64 million in assets and $3.56 in liabilities.
The dinosaur Pleo toys have the ability to bark and shake. They are intended to respond similarly to real pets.
The company previously raised three rounds of funding which amounted to about $23.75 million. All of the venture capital companies involved with Ugobe were Asia-based. The first round was $2.75 million by Frontier Management Group, First Round Capital, and Softbank China Holdings President Chauncey Shey. The $8.5 million second round was by Maxima Capital. And the third round $12.5 million was led by Hyield Venture Capital, a division of Foxconn.
