Fabless turning scale industry a design industry
'6 text + 2 none text' paragraphs, 302 words, 1943 characters(incl. spaces) - About 1 pages
Created 232 days ago, Updated 224 days ago
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Tuning is to modify finished products to satisfy more specific needs, but some small players already went further under the surface in serious manufacturing industries. Fabless means you don’t have a manufacturing plant. It is a concept originated in semiconductor. Qualcom, core technology holder of CDMA, is the most known example. Qualcom researches and develops high performance chips, but it outsources chips from foundries.
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This phenomenon is wide-spread in electronics industry. Quite large number of IT ventures, including Corelogic and Mtechvision in Korea known for digital camera chip, are fabless. These companies are changing the notion that electronics industry is a manufacturing industry.
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Of course, the birth of foundries has made it possible for such phenomenon to happen. The most notable innovator in this industry is TSMC of Taiwan. Before them foundry was basically a way to utilize an idle plant capacity, which otherwise would be run for making the plant owner’s products. TSMC announced in 1980s that they would only do foundry. That means they would only make other companies’ products. Now, major semi-conductor manufacturers like DongbuAnam semi-conductor, Fujisu and even Samsung Electronics produce chips for small fabless companies like Corelogic.
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When Samsung started semiconductor business in 1980s, Korea was all concerned. They were especially worried about the enormous amount of the investment. It was a massive ‘scale’ industry, where a deep pocket was the most powerful competitive weapon. Not any more. The new ventures in this area are basically a group of smart engineers who do not have plants but use foundries for manufacturing.
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A paragraph on crowdsourcing – muji.net (slide)
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As we have seen, the possibility of mass niche is everywhere. Even though the newer markets are leading now, we see seeds in the old brick-and-mortar world as well. Now let’s think about how to create mass niche opportunities.
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