Taiwan's Hon Hai 2012 sales up 16 percent

Taiwan tech giant Hon Hai Precision, which makes gadgets for Apple, said Thursday sales in 2012 rose 16 percent year-on-year.

Hon Hai, which is better known as Foxconn and also does work for Sony and Nokia, said revenues hit a record high of TW$3.22 trillion ($111 billion).

Sales in December were up almost 14 percent on-year at Tw$360 billion, which surprised analysts.

"We had expected sales in December to fall by at least 10 percent in the off-peak season," an analyst from a foreign securities firm based in Taipei told AFP.

Foxconn is the world's largest computer component manufacturer and assembles products for Apple—including the iPhone—plus Sony and Nokia.

The group employs about one million workers in China, roughly half of them based in its main facility in Shenzhen.

Since 2010, more than a dozen Foxconn employees in China have died in apparent suicides, which activists blamed on tough working conditions, prompting calls for better treatment of staff.