Two Asian tigers locked in semiconductor race
IF recent developments are any indication, the semiconductor industry - estimated to register double-digit growth next year to cross US$100 billion in revenues worldwide - seems to be looking to Asia for answers.
In the last few days, new investments have been announced in Malaysia and Singapore. There are also signs that the Japanese, which dominate volume production, are turning to Asia to beat the rising yen.
Singapore has been assembling and testing computer chips for the past 20 years but has been facing increasing competition from neighbouring Malaysia, which is now the world's largest chip assembling and testing country.
In Singapore, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (CSM), part of the government-linked Singapore Technology Ventures, is said to be ready to commit up to US$650 million for what it said would be ''the latest state-of-the-art wafer fabrication plant in the world employing mini environment technologies''.
The joint venture would be the second advanced technology factory for making the basic material of computer chips in which the government has a stake.
The new CSM plant will use 0.5 micron technology, the latest in commercial production but an advertisement at the weekend did not indicate the final product.
Industry sources said the plant would make application-specific integrated circuits, and possibly sophisticated static random access memory (Sram) chips.
Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Toshiba of Japan was reported last week as having plans to assemble DRAM chips from next spring at its existing semiconductor assembly factory.
In August, National Semiconductor Corp of the US also said it would spend US$100 million over the next five years to expand its operations in Malaysia.
Malaysia is the world's largest producer and exporter of semiconductors, with revenues of M$13.4 billion last year, or 42 per cent of the entire electronics industry's output.
The new investments in Singapore and Malaysia come at a time when the global semiconductor market is booming.
Estimates for 1994 growth ranged from nine per cent to a high of 25 per cent.
US market research firm Dataquest Inc reported that the semiconductor market worldwide grew by 9.8 per cent to US$65.59 billion last year.
Revenues were slated to hit US$85.14 billion this year, and possibly rise by 24.7 per cent to US$106.16 billion next year, said US market research firm VLSI Research Inc recently.
