14 DAY TRIAL // A 25-year-old Chinese worker for Foxconn, Sun Danyong, has reportedly committed suicide after finding out that a fourth-generation iPhone prototype he was entrusted with went missing. According to DigitalBeat, this story is mainly meant to show how Apple’s secretive ways put a large amount of pressure all the way to the bottom of its international supply chain.
Sun worked for the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn in the city of Shenzhen, Guangdong province in China. According to the news, he had to ship a number of iPhone prototypes from Foxconn to Apple, when he discovered that one of the devices was missing. This supposedly happen between Thursday, July 9, when he got 16 prototype phones from the Foxconn factory, and Monday, July 13, when he reported the missing handset.
According to a series of local newspapers, including Southern Metropolis Daily, on Wednesday, three of the Foxconn employees went searching through his apartment, an action made illegally, based on the Chinese law. Moreover, there seem to be a series of rumors pointing towards the fact that Sun has been detained and physically abused during the so-called investigation. He committed suicide on Thursday, a little after 3 a.m., when he jumped out of a window in his apartment building, as showed by the surveillance videos.
It seems that the pressure of keeping the secrecy on upcoming Apple devices is high, and the company is asking its business partners not to unveil any details on the handsets they are working on. The missing prototype is supposedly a fourth-generation iPhone that a lot of bloggers were hungry to learn details about, especially since all that was available so far was only a series of rumors.
Apple is putting a great amount of pressure on its business partners to keep the secrecy on its devices, as it is trying to maintain the element of surprise so as to manage to drive sales and its stock price higher. Taiwan-based Foxconn is manufacturing Apple’s iPhones and iPods, and a possible leak would have a negative impact on the partnership between the two companies, hence the pressure on Foxconn's workers. More details on this can be found here.