dc.description.abstract | In the modern society, electronic devices and products have been widely put into used by humans and they have certainly become an important part of people’s daily life. Integrated Circuit (IC) can be simply defined as the heart of all of the electronic products and because of this, the IC industry has always been a pivotal industry around the world and insofar as it can affect the basic lifestyles of all humans such as dieting, clothing, accommodation, transportation, education, recreation, and medical services, where IC technology are used virtually within all of them.
In the value chain of the entire semiconductor industry, the IC design has always had the highest Value-added. The nowadays development of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has also shown the trend of having IC design being the dominating focus of the industry. As the local foundry industry in mainland China continues to expand, with the abundant human resources available in China, and the aid of the supportive policies; IC design industry has become the core of development for semiconductor industry in both Taiwan and mainland China. Therefore, we are overlooking a worldwide competition of market share on the electronic design industry and with the advancement of IC design capability, it has simultaneously promoted the foundry industry and the manufacturing industry in mainland China. At the present time, Taiwan is situated in the upper and leading position of this IC design industry competition.
Taiwan has a full range of semiconductor industrial services, from the IC design to the IC manufacturing and IC packaging and testing. With the professional specialization, division of labor, and collaboration, the total production value of IC has overtaken Japan and is ranked second in the world ranking.
The government of People’s Republic of China (PRC) is actively fostering the semiconductor industry; and in the recent years, particularly in the IC design industry that is both technology-intensive and with the lower capital expenditure in the hardware development. Moreover, the PRC government has already announced a new development plan on the semiconductor industry, where the central government will be investing 19.5 billion in the IC design industry while the local governments and the private companies will be investing a total of 97.4 billion U.S. dollars in the same industry. As a result, the future of the IC industry in the globe will all be affected by the rise of the mainland China on their development plan.
In the most recent two years, mainland China has vigorously involved in the IC design industry. In addition to the huge fund supplied by the central government, a large number of rewards are given as incentives for supporting the IC design industry. Accompanying with the restrictive policy decisions in mainland China regarding the IC design industry, these rules and regulations have restrained foreign countries from entering China’s market and have left the foreign IC design companies have to comply with the procedures and regulations set up by the Chinese government such as providing funding resources; and the IC design related industries in Taiwan being the most evident case of such procedures.
As with the TFT LCD industry in the earlier years, mainland China has considered Taiwan with priority when it wants to devote itself to expanding the IC design industry since Taiwan has already been a developed country and has a shared communicative language. In the past few years, China’s IC design industries had publicly proclaimed their interest in the possibility of a bilateral cooperation between mainland China and Taiwan. Thus, Taiwan and mainland China should pursue an appropriate cooperation mode rather than being at the competing ends.
According to the output value of the IC design industry in 2014, Taiwan’s IC design industry output value had reached 17.5 billion US dollars (about 528 billion Taiwan dollars), while mainland China had 15 billion (about 453 billion Taiwan dollars). Nevertheless, the annual growth rate has shown that China had reached 16.1 percent, which was not very far from Taiwan’s 18.8 percent.
In summary, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the current status of Taiwan and China’s IC design industry, with reference to Mason and Bain’s “Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) Model” in industrial economics, of which it analyzes the IC design industry’s market structure, the company’s economic conduct and the operational performance. Secondary data relevant to the IC design industry will be collected and analyzed, and by comparing the clustering effect, the firm’s behavior and the competitive strategy of Taiwan and mainland China’s IC design industry, the state of operation of Taiwan and mainland China’s IC design industry can be revealed. Lastly, this study will provide new insights into Taiwan’s IC design industry as how would the Taiwanese IC designers behave and improve given the rise of mainland China’s IC design industry.
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