By Patrick Avenell
SYDNEY, NSW: Stress and grief councillors near Apple’s Chinese manufacturing company, Foxconn, must be preparing themselves for another spate of work-related deaths, with news emerging from Taiwan today that the iPad 2 will begin shipping within the next 100 days, with a possible April release flagged.
Although Foxconn is a subsidiary of a Taiwanese company, its Apple manufacturing plant is based in Shenzhen. Over the course of 2010, whilst employees were working long hours making iPhones and iPads, amongst other products from other manufacturers, at least 14 employees committed suicide.
So bad is the suicide problem amongst the hoards piecing together expensive gadgets for western consumption that Foxconn installed netting around the building in an attempt to prevent suicides.
Leaked sources at Foxconn are being quoted in the Taiwanese media today saying that the iPad 2 will be out in the first half of calendar 2011, with Apple presumably using Christmas to run out existing iPad stocks.
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