An Evolutionary Perspective of IC Industry Development in Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwan has successfully developed an IC industry through the efforts of the government and industry itself over the past thirty years. One of key factors that decades of rapid and continuous economic growth and prosperity was driven prominently by the development of an IC industry to let Taiwanese being proud of it. The purpose of this research is to explore the development track of IC industry to know how it worked. This paper reviews the development and transformation process of IC industry in Taiwan. This process will be examined from the longitudinal aspects through synthesizing the literature reviews and observations. It is categorized by three stages: labor-intensive stage, technology-intensive stage and capital-intensive stage for analysis. This study showed that a far-sighted strategy to establish a sound infrastructure of industrial development environment is necessary and sufficient for an emerging new industry especially for high technology. This paper found that the silicon technology cycle in Taiwan is seven years. The closed and dynamic networking relationship among government, university, industry and foreign leaders is instrumental in developing the IC industry in Taiwan.

在過去的三十年當中，台灣在政府與產業界的努力之下，成功的發展出積體電路產業，帶動台灣數十年來快速與持續的經濟成長，主要原因之一很明顯的是由於積體電路產業的發展，而台灣人也引以為傲。本研究的目的是在探討台灣積體電路產業的發展軌跡是如何產生的，本文將研究台灣積體電路產業的發展與轉換過程，此過程將透過結合文獻探討與觀察來進行縱向面的檢視，並且以勞力密集、技術密集、資本密集等三個階段進行分析。本研究顯示一個新興產業的顯現，尤其是高科技產業，有遠見的策略以建立一個健全的基礎建設的產業發展環境是充分而且必要的，本研究發現台灣積體電路產業的矽技術週期是7年，台灣積體電路產業的發展乃得力於政府、大學、產業界和國外領導廠商之間緊密的動態網絡關係。