Taiwan’s Tech Giants – Varsity Online

May 18, 2021 News Editor

Taiwan is now a world leader within the semiconductor and chip industries.IMAGE FROM PIXABAY

In East Asia, a small island with a population of 24 million stays diligently innovative. It is the first in the continent to legalise gay marriage, it has been the number one choice for expatriates, and has had the most efficient global response to Covid-19. Furthermore, the island merits stronger worldwide recognition for one of its key intellectual assets, responsible for fuelling the digital world.

This describes none other than Taiwan and its rapidly improving tech industry. Those who grew up before the 1990’s may remember the ‘Made in Taiwan’ (MIT) stamp common on the bottom of plastic toys, signifying Taiwan’s powerhouse status in the mass-production of inexpensive products. However, Taiwanese intellectual heads have since made firm decisions to sculpt a different professional image for the island. Years of intense development in Taiwan has created some of the world’s most significant science parks, allowing Taiwan to emerge from the shadows to lead the world’s semiconductor and chip industries. These intermediary products are integral for the basic function and memory of digital devices.

One Taiwanese enterprise central to the global production of electronic components is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Founded by Morris Chang in the 1980’s, TSMC is one of the world’s most valuable semiconductor companies, with a $255 billion market capitalisation. It is responsible for 84% of the planet’s most advanced chips, and the reputation of its very small, integrated circuits (which use process nodes ranging from 2 micron to 5 nanometers in size – enough to make devices more power-efficient) has spread far and wide. The company has supplied many major brands including Apple, Huawei, Sony, Broadcom, and Qualcomm. TSMC and another Taiwanese company called United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) are among the biggest contract chipmakers in the world. Taiwan is also home to MediaTek, one of the top five largest fabless semiconductor powers across the globe – a model that enables more investment into research and development.

“Resilient, diligent, and fiercely innovative, Taiwan’s tech workers humbly dedicate every day to push the advancement of engineering”

Other technological sectors in Taiwan are also growing at a rapid pace. Once a giant toy producer, Taiwan is now seeking to develop futuristic manufacturing solutions using intelligent machinery, a plan backed by the local government. In August 2017, Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology laid out a four-year semiconductor programme worth $132 million to accelerate research and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips. An additional $517 million was pledged to develop AI studies and talent.

While exciting, the concrete results of these investments have yet to unfold, leading to criticism from some sceptics. Is Taiwan truly unbeatable in its engineering pursuits? There are several factors suggesting that for the foreseeable future this may be so, at least within the semiconductor and chip industries. The cutting-edge know-how and advancement of semiconductors at TSMC is at least ten years ahead of other heavyweight countries such as South Korea, the United States, or China. Attempts to replicate TSMC’s technology in other places would be counterproductive, as the essence of TSMC’s excellence is presumably based on the collective talent base and the know-how of an extremely intricate design and production system.

Taiwan’s tech giants are not just tech giants, however; they are also key players in Southeast Asian geopolitics. Taiwan’s status in the global tech industry carries such weight that if production processes on the island were to be disturbed, the world’s supply of semiconductors and microprocessors would come to a halt. As Taiwan focuses on the export of intermediate technology goods, a suspension in supply would generate pronounced inconveniences for the production of electronic devices worldwide. As such, Taiwan’s tech industries have been a key factor in China’s hesitancy to seize Taiwan by force.

As a Taiwanese, to say I am proud of our technological industries is sheer understatement. Resilient, diligent, and fiercely innovative, Taiwan’s tech workers humbly dedicate every day to push the advancement of engineering and to carry the island’s safety on their shoulders. There is an ever-growing demand for more technological talent, which is fed not only by the recruitment of brilliant engineering talent from Taiwan and worldwide, but also by ongoing encouragement for young Tawianese women to pursue STEM studies. Whatever the future holds, the ‘Made in Taiwan’ label will hopefully become a timeless signature of quality.

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