Mexico: Alternative for Foxconn's First EV Plant

Foxconn will decide this year between Mexico and Wisconsin to set up its first electric vehicle plant, President of Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn's flagship unit, Young Liu, said during a press conference on Tuesday. He said the availability and affordability of skilled labor and engineering talent will be among the decisive factors. 

According to Bloomberg, Foxconn has increased its automotive capabilities, hoping to become a viable competitor in the race to make vehicles for Apple, one of the company's biggest clients, which is actively working on its own electric car. A further driver is that growth in the smartphone business, one of the Taiwan-based company's core businesses, has slowed over the past three years. 

In early February, sources told CNBC that Apple is close to finalizing a deal with Hyundai-Kia to manufacture an autonomous electric vehicle at Kia's assembly plant in Georgia. However, sources also said that Hyundai is hardly the only OEM in Apple's sights and there could be other automakers under consideration. “Smartphones are a US$500 billion annual market. Apple has about one-third of this market. The mobility market is US$10 trillion. Apple would only need a 2 percent share of this market to reach the size of its iPhone business,” Morgan Stanley Analyst Katy Huberty wrote in a research note back in January.

More news below:

• Eighty percent of people do research in digital marketplaces before purchasing a vehicle. In this interview, Jorge Dávila, Head of the Automotive Segment of Mercado Libre, shares with MBN key focus areas for automakers to consider. “It is common for people to be afraid of digital purchasing channels but we have made the purchasing and selling experience easy and simple, including the processes of down payment for the vehicle,” he explained.

• Swiss fintech Sonect, which allows users to withdraw cash from their smartphone, hit the Mexican market this week. The company aims to create the largest ATM network in the country through partnerships like the one it already has with gig economy-focused platform Lana.

• “There was a time when the marketing industry was not captained by Ph.D.s in Mountain View but by overpaid, high-charging executives in New York and Miami,” writes this week for MBN Pablo Martínez Flores, CEO and Co-Founder of Klustera. Programmatic advertising was insignificant compared to deals closed with a handshake. How have things changed? Read the full article here.

• Youtube launched this week Mi Aula (My Classroom), a joint initiative with UNESCO, where students will be able to watch videos of secondary level courses and some areas of interest for high school students in Mexico and Argentina. At the moment, this program has 2,641 videos selected by UNESCO, of which 1,775 are from Mexico. 

• Google will reduce its Play Store fees globally for developers selling in-app digital goods and services through its main shop. Starting on July 1, the company will reduce the Google Play service fee from 30 percent to 15 percent for the first US$1 million in revenue developers earn using the Play billing system each year.

• Banco Azteca is the fastest-growing financial app in Mexico. According to a report by App Annie, it has registered a 240 percent growth in the last two years, adding 12 million users. The Grupo Salinas' bank aims to have 15 million digital customers by 2021.