Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that the COVID pandemic is spreading in Taiwan, impacting various world-class chip suppliers in the semiconductor industry. The latest bad news came from King Yuan Electronics (KYEC), which is the world’s largest semiconductor packaging and testing company. The company announced a 48-hour suspension of operations due to a widespread group COVID infection affecting 45 workers. KYEC services major downstream chipmakers like MediaTek (Taiwan), NVIDIA (USA) and STMicroelectronics (Switzerland). Currently, Taiwan is the world’s number one provider of foundry as well as packaging & testing. It is also the world’s number two IC design provider. The Taiwanese semiconductor industry is currently the second largest in size, only after the United States. In the meantime, Malaysia, another major chip packaging & testing country, already closed down the entire country and manufacturing lines are keeping only 10 to 20 percent of their labor, just to keep the machines powered, with zero production output.
Source: Sina, June 6, 2021
https://news.sina.com.cn/s/2021-06-05/doc-ikqcfnaz9279554.shtml