The world's appetite for gadgets is apparently growing ever more insatiable. Chinese manufacturer Foxconn is looking to hire as many as 400,000 Chinese workers in the coming year. Many of the new recruits will be working at factories built nearer to their homes, instead of Foxconn's massive Shenzhen facility. This is seen as a way to combat the frequent suicides at the plant over the last year. 

This move would leave Foxconn with about 1.2 million employees building products for Apple and Dell. The company could certainly afford it after seeing a doubling of revenue in the first half of 2010. This won't be the end of the Shenzhen plant though. Foxconn plans to reduce the work force there only slightly, from 900,000 to about 730,000 over five years.

It's unclear if Foxconn would be making these changes had the suicide story not have hit the western media so hard. The manufacturer has also been increasing wages for workers. When you buy gadgets, do you wonder where, and how it is made?

Image via Reuters