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Who's outsourcing whom?

May 08, 2005

Bruce Einhorn has a fascinating article on Taiwan in Business Week. Taiwanese companies, he reports, now control 72% of the world’s production of portable computers, 68% of LCD displays, 70% of microchips, and 79% of PDAs – as well as a third of the markets for manufacturing servers and digital cameras. With the most sought-after engineers of tech products, the island is becoming the brains of the world’s IT industry. My favorite line in the piece comes from MIT’s Victor Zue: “In Taiwan, people say the U.S. understanding of outsourcing is backward. It feels more like the Taiwanese are outsourcing marketing and branding to the rest of the world.” Taiwan’s the organ grinder. We’re the monkey.

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Comments

Isn't this the definition of a global market? There really is no A depends on B equation here. It's all interdependent.

Posted by: James Clay at May 9, 2005 01:28 PM

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