Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon.
This morning, the U.S. woke up to the news that a powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake had hit Taiwan, the strongest earthquake in the region over the last 25 years. After worrying about the human toll of this tragedy and how expensive and time-consuming it will be to rebuild, the next thought many had was whether the world's leading contract chip foundry, TSMC, suffered serious damage and what the effect might be to its top customers such as Apple, MediaTek, AMD, and Qualcomm.
While the news was good for TSMC and its customers, the world's largest foundry did report some damage to some of its chip-making equipment."A small number of tools were damaged at certain facilities, partially impacting their operations. However, there is no damage to our critical tools," TSMC said late Wednesday. More than 70% of TSMC's tools inside its fabs were recovered within 10 hours of the earthquake. In newer fabs, recovery levels were higher.
So there is an uneasy feeling bordering on fear when talk turns to the importance of TSMC in the tech world. David Bader, professor and director of the Institute for Data Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology says,"I believe it’s an existential threat.
Angelo Zino, CFRA research analyst said on Wednesday,"We think the earthquake should serve as a reminder to investors of the risks associated with having so much foundry exposure coming from one region." The tech industry needs to come up with a solution. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.Multiple accounts - one person can have only one accountModeration is done by humans.
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