Comments of business leaders in the ICT industry are important sources for news stories. DIGITIMES sees such news stories as enrichments to our database. DIGITIMES has keen interest in Macronix's IDM business model, and ASE's capability of maintaining leadership in packaging and testing. We are much interested in their unique views of the industry.
Macronix chairman Miin Wu has said that if we can't find the unique value of the industry, then we will keep operating under the existing competition model. If our long-term commitment is tantamount to low salary, then the value of business management must undergo examination. The significance of business management is to explore the value of employees.
Everyone would like to ask MediaTek chairman Ming-Kai Tsai how MediaTek that highly relies on the China market tackles the geopolitical impact. Besides coping with the impact by market diversification, Tsai stressed that the business pattern that used to rely heavily on large customers of traditional PCs and mobile phones is changing. ASE CEO Tien Wu examines how the industry has evolved "from qualitative change to quantitative change".
Several scientists at Bell Labs invented the transistor in 1947. The first mass-produced commercial computer, UNIVAC, was introduced in 1951. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments (TI) invented integrated circuits in 1958. Morris Chang said that he often co-worked with Jack Kilby back then. All these legendary inventors who belong to the first-generation experts in the semiconductor area had stepped down. The development model of the semiconductor industry started from system integration of upstream and downstream parts to division of labor system forged by coopetition among the players in IC design, wafer foundry, IDM and packaging & test.
Look at the industry from the market perspective. When the transistor appeared in 1946, no one could predict the changes in the semiconductor industry in the decades to come. Not until the rise of the Internet in 1997 did the semiconductor industry define its future as information technology. The total global output value of the software and hardware industry were added up to merely US$500 billion then. In just 10 years or more, the enormous Internet businesses have cultivated numerous Internet giants. Most of today's unicorn enterprises are new start-ups that rely on the Internet. By 2020, the traditional information technology market size had expanded to US$3 trillion and the Internet market alone had business opportunities of US$13 trillion. Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep-learning emerged at the same time. On top of that, OECD predicts that AI-based new business opportunities such as metaverse and deep-learning will bring about an enormous market up to US$30 trillion by 2037.
The evolution of various industries based on IT will be ubiquitous and dominate our future world. For semiconductor players that emphasize logic process or memory technology, how to define markets of the mobile phone, consumer electronics, computers, and even innovations across industrial control and automotive ICs to meet new needs are all tough challenges to be addressed.
What talent does the semiconductor industry need? More semiconductor companies in Taiwan have begun to pay attention to the cultivation of employees' cross-industry capabilities. The semiconductor industry is wondering if these employees can create new "human value" in the next 10 or 20 years in a semiconductor that relies heavily on equipment.
