TSMC on alert and Singapore on the rise

Hiya, that is Kenji. I’m penning this week’s publication from Bangkok, the place I’m attending an annual assembly with colleagues from throughout the area.

I used to be posted right here as an editor a couple of decade in the past, and it’s at all times a pleasure to come back again, however the positioning of Thailand — and the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations as an entire — has shifted considerably, particularly since tensions between the US and China began to warmth up round 2018.

Getting caught between nice energy rivals like that is one thing smaller nations search to keep away from, and members of Asean aren’t any exception. However even when international locations do get drawn into these energy performs, it isn’t at all times in a unfavourable manner, similar to Vietnam attracting substantial investments and rising as a serious manufacturing hub of varied tech merchandise throughout this era.

As we function on this version of the publication, Singapore has loved a pointy stand up the worldwide rating of start-up ecosystems, as funding in so-called deep tech surged towards a backdrop of Sino-American tensions. Cambodia, in the meantime, is turning into a battleground between China and Japan, a key US ally, by way of telecom infrastructure constructing, which may flip right into a optimistic for native customers as elevated competitors brings higher providers at decrease costs.

After all, anybody can discover themselves within the crossfire of the US-China rivalry, as our Taipei colleagues remind us with their scoop this week about Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) halting shipments to sure clients to keep away from inadvertently violating US export controls on China.

Irrespective of who’s elected president within the US subsequent week — Kamala Harris or Donald Trump — different international locations will proceed having to navigate the Washington-Beijing rivalry with all its numerous penalties.

Elevating the alarm

TSMC, the biggest semiconductor producer on the earth, has stopped transport to a minimum of two chip builders over suspicions they have been making an attempt to bypass US export controls on China’s Huawei Applied sciences, Nikkei Asia’s tech correspondents Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li reported on this unique story from Taipei.

The 2 builders positioned orders for chips made with 7-nanometre course of expertise, which TSMC has been utilizing for mass manufacturing since 2018. Washington has been proscribing chipmaking gear containing American expertise from getting used to make chips of 14nm or higher for China with out an export license. TSMC’s most superior industrial merchandise are the 3-nm processor chips used for Apple’s iPhone 16 collection.

Implementing Washington’s export controls is way from simple, as chip builders may use layers of non-Chinese language shell firms to camouflage their orders, in response to sources.

TSMC reiterated to Nikkei Asia that it has not equipped Huawei since mid-September 2020 in compliance with the US export restrictions.

Samsung’s struggles

Samsung Electronics is struggling to carry on to its crown because the world’s top-selling smartphone maker, write the Monetary Occasions’ Tune Jung-a and Christian Davies.

The South Korean tech big was the one one of many prime 5 international smartphone makers to expertise falling shipments within the third quarter of this yr, shedding market share to US rival Apple and Chinese language contenders providing slick new foldable units.

Analysis group TechInsights expects Apple’s new generative synthetic intelligence options to assist energy the US firm previous Samsung subsequent yr.

Samsung as soon as pioneered foldable units however ceded the highest spot earlier this yr to Chinese language rival Huawei, which had a 27.5 per cent share of the foldables market within the second quarter, in contrast with Samsung’s 16.4 per cent, in response to IDC.

The corporate’s smartphone struggles come at a crucial level. It has been hit by a collection of failures at its semiconductor division, which accounts for 60 per cent of Samsung’s working revenue.

Deep pockets for deep tech

Singapore’s global presence has surged
in recent years

“Deep tech” endeavours in Singapore are getting a lift amid the ever-intensifying Sino-American tech tensions. Nikkei Asia’s Tsubasa Suruga stories that funding on this discipline — which is predicated on scientific analysis with doubtlessly massive social impacts like chips, robotics and drugs — was up 31 per cent by quantity final yr, at the same time as general start-up funding dropped 20 per cent.

Primarily based on knowledge by DealStreetAsia and Enterprise Singapore, deep tech accounted for 25 per cent of the overall deal worth, up from 17 per cent in 2022.

The enhance in deep tech funding helped push the city-state’s international start-up ecosystem rating to seventh this yr, up from 18th simply two years in the past, and leapfrogging all different Asian hubs, together with Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo, in response to US-based analysis firm Startup Genome.

Traders — who’re principally native or American, but additionally from Taiwan, Japan, France and Malaysia — say deep tech tends to stay below the radar because of the complicated expertise and experience concerned, however it’s gaining significance amid the US-China commerce conflict and provide chain shifts.

New connections

A Japanese tech consortium, with assist from authorities subsidies, is difficult the Chinese language dominance within the 5G market. The preliminary battleground is Cambodia, an ostensibly impartial nation that has proven itself to be a staunch ally to Beijing, in response to an unique report by Nikkei’s Kiu Sugano, Shiho Miyajima and Kyoko Hariya.

Orex Sai, a three way partnership between NTT DoCoMo and NEC, will construct a 4G community at a big industrial complicated within the Southeast Asian nation by March, which is able to function a platform for transitioning to 5G sooner or later.

Cambodia’s telecom community, like many around the globe, is reliant on gear from Huawei Applied sciences. The Chinese language firm and its compatriot ZTE collectively management greater than 40 per cent of the worldwide marketplace for 5G base stations, British analysis firm Omdia says. Japanese gamers as an entire maintain about 3 per cent.

For this Cambodia undertaking, Tokyo is making use of a brand new assist coverage that applies authorities help proactively relatively than ready for a request from a recipient nation. The event co-operation constitution revised final yr, which stresses Japanese assist cash “doesn’t contain debt traps or financial coercion, and that doesn’t undermine the independence and sustainability of growing international locations”, will even be utilized to the undertaking.