"Made in Vietnam" could be the newest thing you'll see printed on the back of your iPhones or Nintendo Wiis in the near future. Taipei-based Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), the world's largest contractor for electronics, announced that they will be expanding their operation to Vietnam.

Responsible for the production of products such as Apple's iPhone and iPod, as well as Nintendo's Wii console, Foxconn decided to continue to diversify their plant operations to Vietnam to maintain their cost-efficient business practices within the most efficient manufacturing area outside of China.

A deal was already signed last August 29 with Foxconn's chief executive Terry Gou and Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment investing a US$ 5 billion contract into various high tech and supporting industries projects. Also, Foxconn has invested US$ 160 million in two plants in the Que Vo Industrial Zone, as well as hiring about 500 local university graduates with plans of hiring up to a maximum of 300,000 employees.

Tung Kim Nguyen, a partner at Indochina Capital, had this to say about Vietnam:

Vietnam is the next outsource manufacturing centre of Asia, this is because of a China-plus-one strategy that manufacturers are adopting and a response to anti-dumping suits that will be hitting the Chinese point of origin manufacturers hard over the next few years

Intel has already had their eye on Vietnam for some time. They announced that they would build a US billion plant near Ho Chi Minh, prompting other manufacturing giants such as Toshiba and Matsushita to pledge future investments.

And Nintendo's supply efforts continue unabated today, as news coming in from the Eastern hemisphere places both Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd. and Wistron Corp as potential new suppliers of outsourced components for the Nintendo Wii.

 

Steadily outselling any next-gen console yet drastically short of supply, the Wii is now reinforced with hardware aid from one of Asia's major hardware manufacturing countries, Taiwan. With the infrastructure, resources and experience in place for dedicated hardware supply, there's hope that Nintendo could raise their monthly output further to achieve their Q4 goal by late December.

Wistron will soon be joining the likes of Foxconn Technology - a regionally well-known motherboard manufacturer - of the Hon Hai Group to assemble Wii machines, while SunPlus Technologies will continue to share supplies of controller chips for the Wii, together with pre-market supplier PixArt Imaging, Inc.

The first generation of the Nintendo Wii console will be those tendered with the original PixArt controller chip, while SunPlus, together with other potential suppliers, will provide an after-market supply of replacement controller chips which will be prevalent in the reportedly "updated" version of the console. The first batch of these replacement chips are expected to ship this quarter, and local industry analysts point out that the shipment may win SunPlus original manufacturing orders for the Nintendo Wii.

Lite-On was reportedly close to the heels of the two companies, planning to enter Nintendo's orders for power supplies for the new batch of game consoles. If successful, the company well known for their optical drive manufacturing portfolio will diversify Nintendo's options for the console's power supplies, a product line once controlled solely by PS2 and Xbox 360 power supply manufacturer Delta Electronics.