5 - Competition and Collaboration among East Asian Firms in the Smartphone Supply Chains

Summary

With a case study of the mobile phone industry, this chapter investigates how competition and collaboration among East Asian firms with different backgrounds and business models have created the industry’s dynamics, turning it into the home of major smartphone assemblers, brand firms, and key component vendors. It also explores value chain resilience of the international economy shaped around global supply chains, even if the networks have been gradually disrupted since 2018 due to the escalating US-China high-tech confrontation. In this chapter, China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan are mapped in the global landscape of the smartphone industry and changes in mobile phone production over the last ten years are elucidated in terms of production site and firm nationality. Historical contexts of the electronics industry in each country that produced a variety of business models and allocated different value chain positions to individual firms are then investigated. The discussion concludes by highlighting different competitive advantages of firms from Korea, Taiwan, and China that have contributed to East Asia’s emergence as the world’s hub of the smartphone industry.