Is Asia minus China, a lot bigger semiconductor market? Vietnam is hot destination now
Date: 15/12/2023
We know China is a big market in Asia and is growing (though slower) irrespective of US imposed restrictions. But look at rest of Asia. It's lot more bigger and is a lot more robust in terms of eco-completeness, and is also growing faster than China. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea together can be ranked bigger than any other semiconductor market in the world in many of the market-segments. If you exclude China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan; the rest-of-Asia is still a big pie of semiconductor eco with India included. It all mean, semiconductor industry is proliferating all over Asia and China's growth/fall will not have any effect on the growth of semiconductor industry in Asia. For those who care for globalized semiconductor eco distribution, this trend should be more than acceptable. Note, Asia is the largest importer of fossil fuel, they need EV automobiles to balance the trade and so is the electronics for those vehicles.
The old Asian-tiger economy linked/driven countries such as Singapore Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia and Vietnam all together can be comparable to any of the individual market size of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. India is also emerging as electronics manufacturing hub with its design talent all around the world. India is fastest growing market in Asia for semiconductors from past 10 years. Among these, Vietnam is seeing more investment-growth in 2022 and 2023.
Let's look at latest on Vietnam, which is attracting significant foreign investment in electronics and semiconductor.
The semiconductors market in Vietnam is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.5% between 2021-2025.
Two domestic firms, Viettel IC Design Center and FPT Semiconductor are into chip design. Amkor has its second largest plant in the world in Vietnam. Intel has a huge OSAT facility in Vietnam. Samsung, a largest foreign investor in Vietnam has six plants in Vietnam and its presence in Vietnam is growing, where it is expanding its next-generation semiconductor substrate (FC-BGA) business. Hanmi Semiconductor, a Korean chip equipment maker, has also set up a local subsidiary.
Synopsys collaborating with the Vietnam National Innovation Center (NIC) to advance IC design talent in Vietnam, with Synopsys supporting the NIC's establishment of a chip design incubation center. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, SK Hynix, and NXP Semiconductors have also built research centers and factories in Vietnam, as per a news report.
Most recent announcement is from AI and GPU processor leader nVidia planning to expand in Vietnam in a big way, where it calling Vietnam a second home.
It is also reported by Nikkei that Vietnam emerging as the most important tech manufacturing hub for Apple outside of China. Apple has asked suppliers to build new capacity for nearly all of its products except the iPhone in Vietnam. Apple is working with China's BYD, a key iPad assembler, to move new product introduction (NPI) resources to Vietnam.
For a complete Asia semiconductor market report priced at US$1600. If interested mail to nsr@emittsolutions.com
