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TAIPEI (Reuters) - Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that rose to global prominence as the manufacturer of the Apple iPhone, is trying to reinvent itself as smartphone sales plateau and Apple Inc diversifies its supplier base.

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FILE PHOTO: A motorcyclist rides past the logo of Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry, in Taipei, Taiwan March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

The company, which kicks off a three-day event on Wednesday to celebrate its 30 years doing business in China, already does much more than assemble goods for others.

It’s a top global producer of display screens, thanks to the acquisition of Sharp Corp. Its far-flung activities include autonomous car startups and investments in cancer research.

But with its stock down almost 20 percent since late last year, Foxconn, Taiwan’s second most valuable company with a market value of $51 billion, is under pressure to show that it can convert new initiatives into growth.

The Sharp purchase and a handful of more recent deals -including an agreement announced this week for Sharp to buy Toshiba Corp’s personal computer business for $36 million - indicates that a push into producing its own branded products is one part of the strategy.

Just as important, though, is a complicated plan to provide “integrated solutions” for businesses that include both sophisticated hardware and software services such as cloud computing, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, told Reuters in an interview.

Woo called it a “new business model” that could be especially appealing to smaller companies and institutions like hospitals, who have sophisticated technical requirements that they often have trouble handling on their own.

“We have built data centers for many of our customers, but we’re not known to provide data center services,”

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