As 82-year-old Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan, it was not just the political onlookers that await the next move from Beijing, tech titans globally are watching with bated breath.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leaves Taiwan after a high-tension visit
Editorji explains why this 14,000-square-mile island is the epicenter of the global tech revolution.
- Simply speaking it is the digital powerhouse of the U.S. with enormous manufacturing centers of China
- Taiwan is the Silicon Valley of Asia, with a large focus on manufacturing and AI
- U.S. consumes more than $63 billion worth of Taiwanese tech exports
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is one of the biggest chip foundries on the planet
- Taiwan accounts for more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing with South Korea at 8%, according to a report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Boston Consulting Group
- Most companies that design chips today — Qualcomm, Nvidia and Apple among them — don't actually do the manufacturing, instead relying on companies like Taiwan's TSMC
- If Taiwan's chip production were permanently disrupted, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates it would take three years and $350 billion in investment to build enough capacity to replace it.
- The island manufactures about 25–30% of integrated circuits (ICs) globally
- Taiwan’s Foxconn, is the world’s largest contract electronics makes iphone and in contract with Google as well
- Globally big suppliers of liquid-crystal display panels
- No one knows for sure how much of China's exports in information and communications hardware are made in Taiwanese-owned factories, but the estimates run from 40% to 80%.