Selected articles on industrial development in emerging economies

China: Supply chain for iPhone highlights cost situation

The smallest part of Apple’s costs arises in Shenzhen. But, manufacturing in China is about to get far more expensive. Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.

The New York Times

Taiwan: TSMC says global chip industry to expand almost 30%

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Taiwan's biggest chipmaker, raised this year’s market forecast, underscoring the industry’s growing confidence in a recovery in demand that’s pushing companies to boost investments.

Bloomberg / BusinessWeek

Malaysia: Electronics sector hit by high costs

The outlook of the electronics industry is good in the second half of 2010 but it is facing a sharp increase in the selling prices of raw materials due to a serious shortage, which impacts negatively on the earnings of some companies.

The Star Online

China: Huawei staff in charm offensive

Chinese expatriates working in India for Huawei Technologies, China’s biggest telecoms equipment maker, are adopting local names and dress in a charm offensive aimed at easing deep-seated suspicions of their company in New Delhi.

FT.com

China's biggest chip maker posts 12th straight loss

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) has reported its 12th straight losing quarter, despite a dramatic rebound in the global chip industry. Still, the company has reported a wider loss than the same time last year. China's chip makers have struggled not only due to the global recession but because incumbents in the contract chip-making business have vigorously defended their turf.

Bloomberg Businessweek

Taiwan: Recovering global demand helps high-tech producers set sales highs

The record sales posted by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and other leading Taiwanese high-tech manufacturers in April 2010 reflect the strength of rebounding global demand for 3C products.

FOCUS TAIWAN

India: Electronic component manufacturers to invest in Tamil Nadu

According to the deputy chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr M K Stalin, Chennai has become a major manufacturing hub for electronic hardware. However, the import content is still as high as 75 to 85 per cent. 'This highlights the great potential for local manufacturing to substitute imports,' he says.

Asian Tribune

India: A SWOT analysis of the electronics and semiconductor industry

Globally, India has achieved number one status in some sectors of engineering services. Thanks to Wipro, TCS, Mindtree, Aricent and lot of such electronics design service focused companies. Their achievement is highly laudable considering youngness of our electronics industry. The real credit goes to hardworking and talented engineers. This status needs to be maintained while getting into manufacturing and design. India should also be thankful to big daddies of global electronics industry for outsourcing their design work to Indian companies.

EE Herald

Vietnam: Local industries spin-off component producers

The trend of large foreign electronic and telecommunications production groups to choose Viet Nam as their production base for global exports is expected to help the country develop supporting industries. Once the industry big-players established local production bases, they brought component producers in their wake. Japanese Meiko, for example, runs a USD 300 m electronic components project. Japanese-owned Hoya makes components for computer hard disks and music players.

Viet Nam News

South Korea: Samsung edges out TV rivals

Samsung's TV manufacturing business has nearly doubled in size since 2006 — the year it surpassed Sony Corp. to become the world's biggest seller of TV sets — and the company is closing in on 20% global market share in TV unit sales, a threshold not reached by any manufacturer since the earliest days of the industry more than 60 years ago.

The Wall Street Journal

Indian photovoltaic production capacity tops 1 GW per year

India’s solar PV (photovoltaic) module production capacity has crossed more than 1 gigawatt (GW) per year or nearly 10% of the global production capacity. However, nearly all of the production is exported.

DNA

Taiwan: Chipmaker TSMC says profit more than doubles

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chipmaker, says its fourth quarter profit more than doubled. Sales have improved with mainly 'computer-related applications growing strongly' amid the emerging global recovery, despite a seasonal decline in demand for consumer-related applications.

BusinessWeek

China could take a decade to double production of Integrated Circuits

Recent research indicates that China is committed to narrow the gap between its IC production and consumption, leading to a doubling of the country's global equipment and materials market in ten years. Also, new equipment purchasing by multinational chip companies with fabs or packaging and test plants in China will increasingly be made in-country by Chinese RD and process engineering staffs.

EE Times

China solar panel maker sets first U.S. plant

Suntech Power aims to boost its share of the U.S. market with a solar-panel manufacturing plant to be built in Arizona. The facility will begin production by next October. With the announcement, Suntech power becomes the first major Chinese cleantech player to bring factory jobs to the U.S.

BusinessWeek

Taiwan's new tech dreams

As the PC business declines, Taiwan's top tech players are shifting out of low-margin businesses and into smartphones, solar-power chips, and beyond.

BusinessWeek

Sri Lanka targets more electronic exports by 2020

Sri Lanka could capture 0.1 percent of the global electronic market by 2020 by venturing into electronic components and product manufacture, according to Prof Kapila Jayasinghe of the Moratuwa University. The electronics industry is growing in the world with an industry contribution worth over USD one trillion and Sri Lanka has identified five major sectors that can be developed under the SME sector.

Daily News

Electronics manufacturing services industry will see a slow recovery

The electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry has been hard hit by the global economic downturn as total revenue of global EMS providers will fall 12% in 2009 after declining 5% in 2008. However, the industry will start to recover in 2010 when the revenue of EMS providers increases 3%, according to researcher iSuppli.

Purchasing.com

Manufacturing trending away from China

Over the past two decades, there has been a massive shift of manufacturing to China, especially for high-volume, low-mix electronic products. But in recent years, there has been a counter trend away from China. Some of the promise of manufacturing in China has worn off. Labor costs are rising. Energy prices have increased the cost of shipping. Many companies have experienced poor service and product recall due to faulty manufacturing. And counterfeiting has dimmed the promise of selling into China’s massive consumer market.

EDN.com

Abu Dhabi to take on Taiwan’s chipmakers

Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company, the latest entrant in the USD 20bn contract chipmaking industry, is proving it has the capital to back its ambition of making Abu Dhabi a chip industry heavyweight through a USD 1.8bn deal to buy a majority stake in Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor. The Chartered acquisition gives Atic a shot at breaking Taiwanese chipmakers’ dominance of the market.

FT.com

China’s photovoltaic industry: Exporting on the cheap

China now leads the world in photovoltaic production, with about 26% of global production. Last year, China produced about 1.8 gigawatts of solar panels. And it appears that the vast majority of those panels are being exported. Suntech Power Holdings, China’s biggest solar panel producer, exports about 98% of the panels it produces.

Energy Tribune

Taiwan: Q3 electronic component output growth forecast at 20% Q-on-Q

The output of Taiwan's electronic components sector is expected to reach USD 5.3 billion in the third quarter this year, 20 percent higher than in Q2, the Industry and Technology Intelligence Services (ITIS) forecasts. ITIS attributs the increase to surging demand for Chinese 'bandit' phones and for CULV (consumer ultra low voltage) notebooks sold by major vendors such as Acer, Asustek, Lenovo Taiwan and Dell.

Taiwan News

Taiwan: How to reboot the dragon

Taiwan's success in electronics is a prime example of economic policies that lifted the island from poorhouse to powerhouse in a generation. But these days, the model that Taiwan has followed — concentrating heavily on building industries that could export to the wealthy West — has been exposed as dangerously flawed. Amid the global recession, electronics exports plunged 28% in the first half of 2009 compared to a year earlier, contributing to a 10.2% contraction of Taiwan's first-quarter GDP.

TIME.com

Chinese startup based in Oregon wants to sell solar panels in U.S.

A Chinese startup vying for a piece of the U.S. solar market has landed in Eugene, hoping to become a national player in the state's growing photovoltaic industry. Centron Solar is moving fast to sell and distribute bargain-priced solar panels made in China to the U.S. market, expected to be the world's next big solar player.

OregonLive.com

Taiwan's Via still lags far behind Intel and AMD

The chip designer Via is making headway in some segments but, according to an analyst, the gap with Americans is huge. Both Intel and AMD will remain competitive in the year ahead despite some challenges.

BusinessWeek

India: The manufacturing of electronic products

Taiwan used to be the leader in manufacturing till a few years back, primarily because the industry was given full support by the Government as well as investors. But in last decade or so the interest of investors shifted towards China because the language remained the same and the costs were even lower with the advantage of similar infrastructure facilities. In India, manufacturing will happen primarily because of lower cost. Also, only large scale manufacturing can cause the components industry to rise.

EXPRESSComputer

China's chip industry will weather economic downturn

China's contract chip makers, battered by a sharp downturn in demand for semiconductors, will survive the recession and become increasingly competitive over time, according to an Accenture executive.

PCWorld

Mexican factories stung by economy

Mexican assembly-line plants have been hit by a triple whammy: economic recession, declining tourism and fears of drug-cartel violence. But local officials are hoping for a silver lining. According to the Sonora Maquiladoras Association, "... the recession is hitting everyone, even maquiladoras, but we also see them thriving and coming back faster than (factories in) the United States."

The Arizona Republic

Taiwan vows to develop new memory chips

Taiwan Memory, the company newly established by the government to restructure Taiwan's struggling D-ram sector, will partner with Japan's Elpida to develop new uses for the memory chip, such as bringing it to mobile phones.

FT.com

China: Chip industry to build 'headquarters economy' around R&D hotbed

With China having pinned many of its plans for industrial transformation on its electronics and information technology industries, the Shaanxi province has become an R&D hotbed among domestic and foreign companies alike. The task for the administrators of the sprawling Xi'an High Tech Industrial Development Zone (HTDZ) is to increase its domestic participants' visibility and competitiveness while drawing more multinationals into the fold.

EEtimes

Taiwan restructures D-Ram chip industry

Taiwan has unveiled a plan to restructure the country’s struggling dynamic random-access memory (D-Ram) chip industry, announcing a government-backed company that will buy key technology from foreign competitors and consolidate the domestic market. The initiative could transform the global D-Ram chip industry by allying Taiwan’s large production base with technology from Japan or the US.

FT.com

Global turmoil deepens China’s chipmaker woes

Almost a decade after Beijing decreed the establishment of a semiconductor industry of its own, the country’s chipmakers are still struggling to compete with their established multinational peers or even to turn a profit. Now the global economic crisis is deepening their woes.

FT.com

Philippine semiconductor industry braces for tougher times

As global demand continues to slide, semiconductor and electronics companies in the Philippines are bracing for layoffs. The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc., SEIPI, estimates that electronics export revenues dipped by 5 percent in 2008, over the previous year, as customers of Philippines-based semiconductor and electronics manufacturing companies saw a drastic drop in demand for their products in the fourth quarter of 2008.

BusinessWeek

Taiwan Semiconductor forecasts first loss since 1990

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest custom-chip maker, will post a quarterly loss, its first since 1990, as customers including Texas Instruments Inc. reduce orders. The company, a benchmark for the technology industry, makes chips for everything from mobile phones to flatscreen televisions.

Bloomberg.com

China: Zhongshan makers focus on high-end switching power supplies

Zhongshan is a major production hub for switching power supplies in mainland China. In the past, the city achieved total sales of about $20 million, posting an annual growth rate of over 15 percent. Most makers attribute such growth to strong demand from the communication, emergency lighting, automotive electronics and portable electronics sectors. But, realizing slim profits from low-end and midrange switching power supplies, Zhongshan makers are now opting to produce more high-end models to boost sales.

Alibaba.com

Chinese chip design sector ripe for mergers

The global economic crisis is forcing a long overdue shake-out among Chinese chip design companies as venture capital funds have dried up and major players are ready to merge. According to one of China’s top three chip design houses, the industry is entering a period of adjustment. 'Our company is ready to be part of the beginning consolidation; acquiring others is one option for us, being acquired by others is also an option.'

FT.com