by Ekrem Duman | Aug 25, 2026 | Taiwan Company Stories, Taiwan Semiconductors & Foundry
⚡ TL;DRTaiwan built a large DRAM industry in the 1990s and lost it — a debt-funded, licence-dependent, fragmented sector crushed by Korean champions who owned their technology and invested through the downturns. What survived, Nanya and Winbond, teaches...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 25, 2026 | Taiwan Company Stories, Taiwan Semiconductors & Foundry
⚡ TL;DRASE Technology is the world’s largest chip assembly, test and packaging company — the back-end specialist that turns bare silicon into usable components, built by the Chang brothers from a Kaohsiung factory into a global consolidator, and now...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 25, 2026 | Taiwan Company Stories, Taiwan Semiconductors & Foundry
⚡ TL;DRMediaTek turned chip design into a turnkey product — shipping not just silicon but the reference board and software that let anyone build a phone — and rode that model from Taiwanese DVD chips to Shenzhen’s handset explosion to a...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 25, 2026 | Taiwan Company Stories, Taiwan Semiconductors & Foundry
⚡ TL;DRUMC was Taiwan’s first semiconductor company and TSMC’s original rival — and after losing the leading-edge race it made the industry’s smartest retreat, abandoning the node arms race in 2018 to become a highly profitable specialist...
by Ekrem Duman | Aug 25, 2026 | Taiwan Company Stories, Taiwan Semiconductors & Foundry
⚡ TL;DRTSMC invented the pure-play foundry — a chip factory that competes with none of its customers — and turned that neutrality into the most consequential manufacturing monopoly of the modern economy, producing the leading-edge silicon behind...
