Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn is already one of the biggest companies in the consumer electronics space. But for the most part the company manufacturers hardware that’s designed and sold by other companies including Apple, Amazon, Dell, HP, Huawei, Microsoft, Motorola, and Sony, among others.

The company also has subsidiaries such as FIH Mobile which manufacture and sell their own devices. And now it looks like Foxconn wants to expand that part of its business.

The company has announced plans to acquire Belkin International for $866 million.

Belkin is probably best known for making PC and smartphone accessories including chargers, cables, and batteries. But the company also owns Linksys, Wemo, and Phyn, which means that if the deal goes through, Foxconn would pick up:

  • a well-known networking/router maker
  • a home automation company
  • a smart water monitoring system

The plan is to continue running Belkin as a a subsidiary of Foxconn, which means it’s unclear what changes we could expect to the product lineup, if any.

Foxconn would also acquire hundreds of patents, which might be at least as important as the hardware businesses.

But the deal also needs to be approved by regulators, which isn’t necessarily a given these days. So it’s unclear if or when the acquisition will be completed.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,546 other subscribers

4 replies on “Foxconn to acquire Belkin, Linksys, and Wemo for $866 million”

  1. American companies are dying. Three decades of both Democrat and Republican corrupt rule have saddled U.S. companies with ever increasing Government Regulation, increasing Taxes, and a declining Public Education System from which to hire workers. There has been a glimmer of hope lately that this situation might turn around; but I think it’s too little, too late – Washington is doing all it can to extinguish that glimmer.

  2. This just does not add up: last I checked, Belkin’s founder, Chet Pippin, was a billionaire at this point and his company was pulling in around $1.5 billion annually ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2015/11/23/techs-newest-billionaire-is-making-a-bet-on-the-internet-of-things/#38544c231586 ). So unless the company has suddenly stopped being quite as ubiquitous and has hit hard times, this deal simply does not add up. They are worth much, much more than the amount these Chinese cheapskates are tallying them up to be. I wonder if some unsavory backdoor deals were made that are not being disclosed.

  3. Again chinese company wants to get all by most cheapest price. Also when it come to chinese nobody asks the questions:
    1. how they could do that: offers lowest price ever for well known brands with plenty of patents and technologies?
    2. why other european or US companies can not get this lowest price?
    3. what about national security and jobs in the US and EU? (because they going to close many jobs there, and on existing job position put asian workers, sooner than later and open more job position in china or taiwan or where ever but not in US or EU for sure)

Comments are closed.