Foxconn/Hon Hai plan billion dollar Apple factory…

Interesting notes from Taiwan this morning as we sift through the many miles of rapturous reporting that Apple’s business plan (make good products, don’t brag, respect customers enough to give them things they enjoy using and so make money) continues to work, we come across yet another hint at the company’s future plans.

Apple’s results have generated stellar stock movements, not just as regards AAPL stock, but also that of key partners. Early morning news from the East reveal that shares of Apple’s contract manufacturer, Foxconn, have also shot up 6.33 percent at time of writing.

That’s nice, but that’s not the news…seems the company’s parent firm, Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry has plans to build an all-new $1 billion factory in China that “could be gearing up for the next generation of Apple products,” and that speculation doesn’t come from us, but from MarketWatch.

That Apple is already working up to five years ahead in terms of its product plans should surprise absolutely no one. No company could deliver such a substantial growth story since 1999 without having sat down and mapped out some kind of a vision, Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, is known to adopt five and longer-term plans when it comes to business.

There’s no way yet we lesser mortals can predict what this new billion dollar factory is going to be churning out, but relatively recent moves such as the acquisition of PA Semi and the decision to create a huge data centre in North Carolina can only lend a little extra spice to any near-term speculation we can create.

In the medium-term, we hope for more notions of what’s to come at WWDC next year, when we consider it likely the company will begin to explain just some of the ideas it hopes to explore in a future iteration of Mac OS X, now it has been able to strip the majority of legacy PowerPC code from within Snow Leopard, which should be seen as a framework for future innovation.

With the accent of industry innovation – at least on the software side – now focused on cloud-based services and pervasive internet devices, we’re curious just how important the product we all now call the tablet in certain knowledge the MultiTouch device we see will be something other than we expected, we’re wondering just what kind of product family Apple believes is worth convincing a key partner into building a billion dollar factory to create. Though certainly part of that fabricator’s output will be future model iPhones.

Back to watching the betting on new product upgrades today. Don’t be surprised if Apple keeps us waiting though – the company can be like that from time-to-time. After all, they already have plans to fly something in by Christmas.