What kind of world will it be in 2030? The era of 5G with low latency, high speed and ultra-connectivity is maturing, and people are waiting for 6G that will leverage low orbit satellites to achieve decentralized bandwidth, opening yet another a new chapter of human life. By that time, at least 30% of the cars on the market will be electric vehicles (EV), and Level 5 self-driving cars combined with smart poles will bring about obvious changes in transportation, and smart cities will take shape. Under the ESG framework, efforts to improve information security using quantum technology will be rewarded; more efficient energy mechanisms will be connected to the super grid; the greenhouse effect will see improvements; people will be dreaming of a more stylish smart city; and we'll have new audio-visual experiences. These we can foresee and observe from the market side.
Backend house ShunSin Technology, a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology (Hon Hai Precision) specializing in system-in-package (SiP) modules, is poised to reap handsome income by rendering packaging services for 400G optical transceiver models in the second half of 2021, according to industry sources.
Taiwan-based PCB maker Apex International, with main manufacturing operations in Thailand, plans to invest NT$3.74 billion (US$135.1 million) to build new production lines at its factory site in the Southeast Asian country this year, according to industry sources.
Companies in the "tech products and equipment" and "automotive manufacturing" sectors account for half of the Digitimes' Asia Supply Chain 100 (ASC 100) list, but semiconductor firms well lead the list in both average profit and average market value. ASC 100 is a newly released reseach on Asia's top 100 tech firms. ASC 100 is a study based on the companies' revenues, profit and market cap that will be renewed annually.
Benefiting from the US-China tech war and sharp chip shortages following the pandemic outbreak, and with automotive clients competing for foundry capacity support, the entire semiconductor industry is poised to enjoy robust order momentum through 2022, allowing semiconductor stocks to gain traction in the market. TSMC and Samsung Electronics, now the world's only two companies able to commercialize sub-7 nm foundry nodes, have been in a two-horse race for grabbing the crown in the Digitimes' Asia Supply Chain 100 (ASC 100) research, ranking first and second, respectively, by market capitalization in 2020. ASC 100 is a study based on the companies' revenues, profit and market cap that will be renewed annually.
Of the companies in Digitimes' Asia Supply Chain 100 (ASC 100), Samsung Electronics had the highest net income US$22.1 billion in 2020. But TSMC - in third place in overall net income - had the highest net profit margin of 38.7%, way higher than Samsung's 11%. ASC 100 is a new released research on Asia's top 100 tech firms - a study based on the companies' revenues, profit and market cap that will be renewed annually.
Digitimes, an Asia-based premium source of tech supply information, has just released its 2021 Asia Supply Chain 100 (ASC100) research results. In terms of 2020 revenue, Japan's Toyota Motor, South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision (Foxconn) are the top three in ASC100, a freshly launched research on Asia's top-100 tech firms. The ASC 100 research is a study based on the companies' revenues, profit and market cap that will be renewed annually.
In the first five months of 2021, 25 new industrial parks were established in Vietnam, a significant increase from the first-half 2020's six, according to research by US-based CBRE.
With Asia Pacific countries such as Taiwan and Malaysia witnessing COVID-19 infections surging, sources from the upstream supply chain believe shortages of notebook components could worsen.
While Southeast Asia is the most popular investment destination for electronics manufacturers seeking to diversify production, Vietnam seems to be the biggest beneficiary of the so-called "China+1" strategy - running production in China and other places at the same time.
TSMC is gearing up expansion of its capacity in response to strong demand from diverse sectors. According to the foundry's CEO, TSMC will invest a total of US$100 billion in capacity expansion through 2023. In the car industry, Foxconn has made yet another move to expand its reach in the electric vehicle sector. Foxconn and Thailand's PTT have just signed an MoU for forming a JV for the production of EV in Thailand. The importance of Southeast Asia for the global supply chain is growing fast. Austria-based AT&S has just disclosed a plan to set up an ABF substrate production base in Southeast Asia.
Foxconn Technology Group (Hon Hai) will form a joint venture with PTT, Thailand's majority state-owned oil and gas company, in the second half of 2021 as part of their memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed for cooperative production of electric vehicles (EV) in the Southeast Asian country.
AT&S has disclosed plans to invest EUR1.7 billion (US$2.07 billion) to set up a new production base for ABF substrates in Southeast Asia to satisfy the needs of its major HPC chip clients.
Malaysia is where a number of Japan- and Taiwan-based passive component vendors operate their regional factory sites, and their production may be disrupted by an ongoing two-week nationwide lockdown there, posing a further impact to the already-tight supply of certain components, particularly aluminum capacitors, according to industry sources.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, investors in Thailand have turned their investment targets to enterprises in the stage of growth, resulting in a reduction in number of loans to startups in 2020 to 30 from 2019's 41, but the overall investment amount still went up from US$109 million in 2019 to US$364 million in 2020, according to a report by Techsauce.
