Report highlights opportunities for UK companies
A new report ‘Northeast Asia’s Semiconductor Market’, from the UK-APAC Tech Growth Programme highlights significant opportunities for UK compound semiconductor companies in Taiwan and South Korea.
While Taiwan is at the forefront of semiconductor fabrication, aside from GaAs foundries Winfoundry and ASWC, Taiwanese companies make most of their revenue from silicon-based chips. Only a small portion come from compound semiconductor products, according to the report.
For GaN and SiC, Taiwan’s industrial chain is less developed than GaAs, and the report says that UK companies can provide the technologies that Taiwan needs while "Taiwan provides the ability to mass produce such technologies at low- cost.
Korea has relied heavily upon imports of compound power semiconductors due to lack of technological capabilities and patents being dominated by European, American, Chinese, and Japanese players. Korean firms only account for 1 to 2 percent of global compound semiconductor sales.
The report highlights a number of opportunities for collaboration with Korean companies and research organisations, including with the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) which aims to invest around £78M by 2028 to develop advanced compound power semiconductor technologies.
A Korean Government initiative, ‘Semiconductor Mega Cluster Vision’, also offers scope with its focus on materials, equipment, and fabless operations, while supporting the development of new technologies for AI chips and compound semiconductors.
The full report can be downloaded here.
