Contract electronics manufacturer Wistron Corp (緯創) last week said that it plans to purchase land in Vietnam, as the company continues to gradually shift production to Taiwan, India and the Philippines to diversify risk.
The 232,087.74m2 lot the company aims to secure is in the Dong Van III Industrial Zone in Ha Nam Province in northern Vietnam, Wistron said in a regulatory filing.
The transaction would total 337.4 billion dong (US$14.6 million), Wistron said.
The company did not provide additional details on the purchase, which remains subject to approval by the board of directors at a meeting next month.
Wistron, an assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, also manufactures notebook computers, PCs, tablets, game consoles, servers, monitors and LCD TVs for clients on a contract basis.
Wistron might build a factory to produce information technology-related products in Vietnam, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported on Wednesday, without citing sources.
The company might initially focus on displays and expand to laptops, the report said.
Credit Suisse Group AG’s equity research team said in a report on Wednesday that Wistron’s latest round of spending in Vietnam is aimed at providing an alternative option for its key US notebook computer clients in the long term, as it aims to start mass production beginning late next year or 2021.
In addition, the Vietnam location might offer better logistics and labor compared with its Philippine site, which could help improve the company’s performance margin in the long term, Credit Suisse said.
Wistron chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) previously said that, in response to the US-China trade dispute, the electronics industry would shift production out of China to mainly Southeast Asia, but firms would not focus on a certain country or region and it would also be difficult to form industrial clusters such as those in China’s Kunshan or Chongqing.
Wistron also has manufacturing facilities in Mexico and the Czech Republic to support server production, but the company’s production remains largely based in China.
Other Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturers — such as Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), Pegatron Corp (和碩), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) — that have plants in China have also been shifting some of their production to Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia and the US to avoid high US tariffs imposed on products made in China.
Compal, for instance, has completed setting up and expanding capacity in Taiwan and Vietnam to sufficiently meet demand for notebook shipments to the US.
Quanta has focused on Taiwan and Thailand, and Inventec on Taiwan and Malaysia to diversify their supply chains, Credit Suisse said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
DIVERSIFYING: Following customers’ demand to improve supply chain resilience, ASE is looking for sites in the US, Japan and Mexico, a company executive said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it plans to launch a new high-end chip testing fab in the US next month to better serve its key customers based in North America, particularly California-based artificial intelligence (AI) customers. The new US testing facility would be operated by the firm’s subsidiary ISE Labs Inc, it said. ASE’s major customers, and high-ranking US officials and representatives from American Institute in Taiwan are to attend the fab’s opening ceremony on July 12, it said. ISE Labs last year acquired a 5,942m2 facility in San
Local companies believe that nearly a third of all job opportunities will vanish in 10 years due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a survey released by online job bank yes123 on Tuesday. In the survey of 1,016 companies on the labor market’s third quarter outlook, the job bank focused in part on AI’s impact on workers and asked companies what percentage of jobs they felt would be lost to AI’s round-the-clock productivity and high-speed computing prowess. Respondents felt on average that 29.2 percent of job opportunities would be lost to AI over the next 10 years, but there
Taiwanese workers earned an average of NT$47,000 per month this year, but 40 percent are struggling financially and 18 percent plan to switch jobs within 12 months, two separate surveys showed yesterday. The amount equals a 5.4 percent increase from a year earlier to a decade high, 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said. The government is due to review the nation’s minimum wages. Employees at computer and consumer electronics manufacturers reported the highest average monthly wage of NT$60,000 a month, followed by semiconductor firms at NT$59,000, and vendors of shoe and textile products, along with software and Internet businesses at NT$55,000, 104 Job