Apple camera component supplier Sony is considering joint investment of $7 billion in Apple supplier TSMC’s first chip plant in Japan, Nikkei reports Friday, citing “multiple people familiar with the matter.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, and Sony are considering jointly investing about 800 billion yen ($7 billion) to build a semiconductor factory in western Japan, Nikkei has learned.
Sony may also take a minority stake in a new company that will manage the factory, which will be located in Kumamoto Prefecture, on land owned by Sony and in an area adjacent to the latter’s image sensor factory, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The factory will make semiconductors used in camera image sensors, as well as chips for automobiles and other products, and is slated to go into operation by around 2023, or 2024, the people said.
Plans for the facility — which would be TSMC’s first chip production operation in Japan — come as the global tech industry grapples with unprecedented semiconductor shortages and supply chain disruptions.
The Japanese government, which is increasingly concerned about maintaining supply chain stability amid the chip shortage and rising tensions surrounding the Taiwan Strait, will support the project with subsidies, Nikkei learned.
MacDailyNews Take: Offshoring chip fabrication was a national security failure for every nation not named Taiwan.
See also:
• Apple supplier TSMC to begin mass production of 5nm chips at new Arizona plant in 2024 – July 15, 2021
• Apple supplier TSMC to build multibillion-dollar chip plant in Arizona with Trump admin backing – May 14, 2020
• President Trump and Intel CEO announce $7 billion investment in next-gen semiconductor fab in Arizona; will create more than 10,000 jobs – February 8, 2017
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“Offshoring chip fabrication was a national security failure for every nation not named Taiwan.”
Who makes Apple’s T2 security chips? Are they made in the US? The M1 has this function built in? Is that right?
When Microsoft released a game machine to compete with Sony, I always wondered why Sony didn’t respond in kind by releasing Linux and productivity software for the PS3. Such software would be aimed at high school and college students who would likely own a PS3 anyway. The idea being that if you owned a PS3, you would have less reason to need a Windows box. I know this exists, but bundling it with every machine would be very different, and could have changed the world by showing ordinary people that there IS a world outside windows.
It is still something they could do, but in the tablet/iPhone world it would likely make less difference.
Ugg!
Why does MDN keep screwing with the formatting of what I type? I put in a divider because the above is two totally different topics, and MDN just deleted it, turning what I wrote into a confusing non-sequitur. I also can’t type bullet points, making lists harder to read and understand. And I can’t edit the surprize results either. 🙁
Yes So y has become a Schizophrenic company, good, bad, indifferent but for years ow barely ever innovative or imaginative.
Sounds exactly like Apple, doesn’t it?……
Well said MDN and thank heaven that they have done it and increasingly so. As and when Taiwan is absorbed into China at least there is a chance that production and intellectual property might be able to be sustained and built up elsewhere. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about but at least this way disaster may not be unmitigated disaster if we are lucky.