Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, the main assembler of Apple products, plans to add 15,000 new employees to its staff of over 1 million this year in one of the biggest yearly recruitment campaigns in its history.

Chu Wen-min, a spokesman for Hon Hai, said that the new positions will include jobs in next-generation business areas including 4G wireless services, cloud computing services and e-commerce. He didn't specify how many new employees would enter each field.

The majority of the new hiring at the world's largest contract electronics assembler will take place in Taiwan, Chu said.

Hon Hai, which goes by the trading name Foxconn, has been embarking on a campaign to move away from its contract-manufacturing model as the market for smartphones and tablet computers becomes more saturated, diminishing margins for once-lucrative products.

In October, the company won one of the licenses to operate Taiwan's 4G mobile spectrum. It has also launched a partnership to build applications with Mozilla's Firefox browser.

The company is also looking to open factories in the United States in order to better tap the market.