Samsung has a far smaller share than TSMC in the wafer foundry sector, but Samsung's technologies built from its experience in memory and Exynos series AP production are as good as any other leading players. At the moment, Samsung's non-memory businesses together contribute only 7% of the company's revenues, but profits...

The worldwide semiconductor equipment market, which had a scale of US$60.5 billion in 2018, is controlled mostly by companies in the West. The development of China's semiconductor industry has been constantly threatened by possible US government bans on makers providing most advanced equipment to China's firms.

The global IC packaging and testing market had a scale of US$28 billion in 2018 with the top-10 players commanding a combined 84% share. Three of the top-10 players are based in China. Of the four sectors in China's semiconductor industry, packaging and testing is the one with technologies closest to the worldwide level...

Within China's semiconductor industry, the IC design sector actually achieved the most progress in 2018. But how big exactly is China's IC design industry? There have been many versions of the story.

China at the moment has as many as 30 semiconductor fabs under construction - the most ambitious investment plan the global semiconductor industry has ever seen. China's memory industry was originally meant to be a key growth driver, but it has lost momentum after the US ban on exports to China-based DRAM maker JHICC...

The different sectors of the semiconductor industry are clearly defined with specific work, and therefore each sector's self-sufficiency rate must be looked at in their own right. The meaning of "Made in China" would mean little if seen in a confusing perspective. Lumping together the production values of IC design, manufacturing,...

Undoubtedly the semiconductor industry is a key factor underlying the US-China trade war. However, when we try to understand the strength and progress of China's semiconductor industry, we discover that all the figures seem connected and yet cannot be compared directly. The production value of the wafer manufacturing...

Prior to 2000, the majority of China's industry was basically manufacturing businesses expanding from the Pearl River Delta to the Yangtze River Delta, and then onto Chengdu and Chongqing. However, with the production ecosystem growing mature, many of the supporting sectors also started to take shape, giving a new outlet...

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook are five major Internet service providers of the US. Their relationships with China have gradually turned from collaborations to confrontations, as the country has been citing national security or the need to grow local enterprises to bar the US firms from the China market.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has claimed that software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software. The concept of machine learning has somehow infinitely expanded people's imagination about software. The biggest difference compared to hardware is that software offers high added value that incurs very low cost in...

During the Industrial Age, the US was the world's leader in the automotive industry, but that is no longer the case now. In 2018, 370,000 units of electric cars were sold in the US, but the sales in China were as high as 1.255 million units.

The PC market used to cater mainly to white-collar workers, with manufacturers relying mostly on HP and Dell. The traditional PC and handset assembly sector remains a stable supply chain with the US still being the largest market. Currently, Taiwan still accounts for 80% of the worldwide notebook manufacturing, and for...

The worldwide ICT industry is formed by supply chains that cooperate with each other. Prior to 2000, the ecosystem was structured simply in linear partnerships between upstream and downstream sectors with US-based first-tier vendors dictating the standards and specifications, and outsourcing manufacturing orders to their...

I call the first island chain in East Asia the "Asian Edge," which carries a double reference: cutting-edge technologies in an IT context, and the peripheral in geopolitics. In the ICT market, the US is the first superpower, while China, which has been catching up fast, comes in second. Following the two dominating forces,...

How is the trade war between the US and China affecting Taiwan, Japan and South Korea? Why are semiconductors and 5G becoming the key issues of their brawls? 5G technologies are bringing revolutionary changes to the ICT industry's operation and ecosystem. Apart from the economic benefits, they have strong implications...