As the Russian-Ukrainian fracas continues, various countries and firms are now busy in evaluating where the upcoming disturbance and disruption in the supply chain will happen. Now, as the financial frictions escalate between China and other western countries, a huge concern over China’s dominating action on Taiwan has augmented. These review film worries have spotted the requirements of superior visibility of sub-tier supply chains for intricate items like semiconductors, and also the necessity of cleverly expanding the global semiconductor supply chains. Interestingly, in Taiwan, TSMC solely grabbed the vast majority of market share of 53.1 percent, which is then followed by Samsung Electronics 17.1 percent, and UMC of 7.3 percent.
It has helped the market share to get concentrated in the region above 60 percent, which according to the experts, the international semiconductor sector’s market share is heavily concentrated in Taiwan. Researchers are also worried that if China manages to grab the entire territory of Taiwan, it will vastly disturb the production of global semiconductors and the supply chain.
If the entire disruptions in the semiconductor supply chain is considered, which obviously the coronavirus is also hugely responsible, the industry was already filled with severe disruptions much before the pandemic stepped in. For instance, the earthquake in the Pacific Rim, cyber warfare, insufficient water supply, lack of top-notch production materials, and power cuts have all put huge pressure on the semiconductor devices. Interestingly, the US China scuffle during the time of the Biden administration increased the price of important goods and also restricted the access to certain items by blacklisted Chinese firms.
The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) was also blacklisted in December 2020 for SMIC’s alleged association with the Chinese defense forces, which endangered various chip manufacturers from which the US firms can get their chips. A data from Interos stated that 45 percent of the disruptions have severe effects on the semiconductor supply chain. Moreover, the effect of cyberattacks on TSMC machines in 2018 or the X-Fab Silicon Foundries ransomware attack in 2020, accounted for just 5 percent of all events, but data shows the frequency in the graph increased with the appearance of the COVID-19. In fact, the hacking that was sponsored by the state, like Chinese groups looking to steal other intellectual property to fortify its manufacturing capabilities.