Having just come back from a long (and heated) debate with someone about this topic, I thought I'd ask the community at large for their opinion. This is one of those questions for which there is no right answer, and there is no definitive response.
This debate may be relevant here, because as we have heard from Hubitat, that new hardware development may be stalled for at least a year due to the lack of readily available chips/semiconductors. I certainly have seen it in the lack of Home Automation equipment that is commonly available.
The question at hand, is whether or not America will use this supply shortage to start to wean themselves from Chinese manufacturing. Will companies in America start to develop their own semiconductors, or will American consumer facing companies just tell consumers to wait.
Even if there is a desire to develop indigenous sources of supply, will they begin to come in America, or are the barriers to entry so high that they won't start?
Is American Tech at an inflection point with regards to Chinese tech manufacturing, or is this just a lull in the process?
Your comments, please. (I hate to lose these debates!)
I work in the chip industry, there a lot of capacity in America already but more diversity would be better. Intel (Logic), Micron (Memory), Samsung are the big ones. But some devices are only made in certain places other than America. Korea and Taiwan are big players as well, TSMC, Samsung, .... In the mid 2000's lots of American fabs started to outsource there tech to foreign fab's like how TI did starting with 45nm tech to UMC (Taiwan). Most all the mfg fabs in California have move out of state or over seas for obvious cost and enviro restrictions, they will never come back. Texas, Idaho, and Oregon are the big American mfg hubs with lots of development still done in California. Many smaller fabs still running older tech everywhere, analog and simple devices that dont need the latest < 0.18nm nodes.
There will be no economic will to do this unless consumers are prepared to wear the higher cost of manufacturing outside of these countries.
I agree whole heartedly that if America is to renew it's manufacturing capacity in this vital area, consumers will have to bear the increased costs.
Will they? Or, will those who outsource have the dramatic upper hand?
Reminds me of this article,
I think the smaller players will feel the hurt. The bigger guys will find a way to get what they need.
I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for Apple's bottom line. Last time I looked, market cap >2 trillion (yes, with a "T") and net worth >$65 billion. If it's good business to build chip manuf. capability they should build it, and I have no interest in subsidizing it.
I agree. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft can solve this together with the amount of money they have. No need for it to be subsidized.
At some point (which may be now-ish), you'll see governments either directly invest or incentivize private industry to invest locally, in the name of preserving national security. This is a big example of that being discussed now.
Of course, semiconductor production is only a piece of the puzzle. You also have device assembly and manufacturing. Plus the design phase before any of that. Agree with you all that it will be very interesting to see how this all unfolds as we unwind over a long period of time from the covid-19 impacts to industry.
I just don't want that to devolve to helping Apple sell more iPhones and iPads, or MS selling more copies of Windows. I worry about things done in the name of "national security" - such a wonderfully loose and poorly defined phrase that almost anything can be made to fit by industry lobbies.
