Vietnam’s Microchip Industry Keeps Getting Bigger

If you know anything about the beginning of Silicon Valley, you know that it all started with a group of men called the Traitorous Eight, who worked in a company called Fairchild Semiconductor. They were pioneers in chip manufacturing and laid the foundation for the most productive tech valley in the world. Chips are still one of the most important areas in technology, they are in every computer device on the planet and it’s a highly competitive field with the likes of Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Samsung, Qualcomm, and lots more competing. Which chip is going into the latest iPhone, HTC, or Samsung phone is headline news.

Undaunted, Vietnam is entering the fray. Or at least, taking chip manufacturing into its own hands. Just last week saw the formation of the Ho Chi Minh Semiconductor Industry Association. It brings together industry leaders, universities, and companies to facilitate the learning, research, and production of semiconductors in Ho Chi Minh city. This means money is being funneled into connecting the dots, building more factories, and looking long-term at chip manufacturing in Vietnam. Although it’s an industry that takes a decade to build up, the money is already pouring in.

This is big. After all, in 2012 alone, Vietnam earned US$16 billion through exporting electronics. That’s a 91 percent jump from the year before. I wrote about this in January, highlighting how Vietnam’s electronics manufacturing is getting really serious.

So the electronics sector is already hugely profitable in Vietnam, but what does this association spell for the future? It means we’ve got cross-institutional involvement in microchip manufacturing. And when you’ve got the government on board, processes get streamlined, land is opened up, and bureaucracy is potentially reduced.

Now if this kind of support could also trickle down into domestic software startups that work in local and global markets, we’d be looking at a really different Vietnam. But I doubt that’s coming anytime soon.

(Source: Bao Bien Tu, article in Vietnamese)