No Longer "Made in Taiwan"

Innovation over simple contract manufacturing is the key to Taiwan's economic future, or demise

"Made in Taiwan," the label ingrained in every American, is quickly becoming an icon of the 90's rather than the everyday slogan it once was.

Contract manufacturing now sits in Taiwan’s rear view mirror as the country enters its first age away from just manufacturing. Taiwan’s industry was primarily based on manufacturing but since the late 1990's Taiwanese companies have taken the turn to cell phone development and PC designs, adding innovation to their list of operations.

Four Taiwanese manufacturers control over 70% of notebook manufacturing currently. The other Taiwanese notebook brands control another 10% of the manufacturing development. As early as 2001 the capacity in Taiwan to build notebooks all but vanished. The "Big 4" in notebook assembly builds exclusively in China.

One of the largest outsourcers to Taiwan is Dell, the world’s second largest PC maker. Over 50 percent of Dell's product development is done in its Taiwan branch according to CNET. That branch began with 50 employees in the early 2002 and currently has over 300.

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute announced that Taiwan had overtaken Japan in mobile phone PCB production earlier this year. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known as TSMC, has a 50% global market share for semiconductor foundries alone. Taiwanese manufacturers have nearly a 100% global market share for retail motherboards, power supplies, PC cooling and enclosures. However, there is a trend with all of these big Taiwan claims: virtually all of the production is done inside China.

Taiwanese companies were barred from manufacturing technology outside of Taiwan on less than 0.25 micron nodes until yesterday. The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairsjust declared the 180nm node legall for Taiwanese-owned, Chinese-based manufacturing.

Even with all of these strong indicators that Taiwan has controlling interests in the world of PC manufacturing; investment analysts are already weary of Taiwanese companies in 2007. The TAIEX, or Taiwan Capitalization Weighted Stock Index, has lagged behind other Asian markets for five consecutive years -- about the same time the country began moving its manufacturing base from Taiwan to China.

(c) www.dailytech.com

Taiwan Quake Rattles Asian Communications

by Geoff Duncan

The 7.1 magnitude quake which hit off Taiwan's southern coast Tuesday has disrupted telecommunications and Internet service in Asia.

The 7.1 magnitude earthquake which struck off Taiwan's southern coast Tuesday has dealt a sharp blow to telecommunications and Internet service in south Asia and the Pacific Rim, as companies estimate it may take weeks to fully restore service. Communications providers are attempting to re-route traffic destined for areas as diverse as Hong Kong, Japan, China, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and India, but congestion and service outages may impact services for weeks.

According to Verizon, as many as 18 underseas telecommunications cables serve the Pacific Rim and south Asia; several cables were damages as a result of the Taiwan earthquake, and it may take weeks to get repair teams into the area, locate the problems, and effect repairs.

The U.K.'s Cable & Wireless has been redirecting traffic throgh Australia and Japan. Chunghwa Telecom said communications between Taiwan and Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong were offline, as well as communication to China, which were all routed through Hong Kong.

The quake hit just offshore from the town of Hengchun, came on the second anniversary of a tsunami that took more than 200,000 lives in southern Asia. Two people were killed when their home collapsed, and a total of 42 people were reported injured in southern Taiwan.

(c) www.digitaltrends.com