Apple eyes foldable phones and VinFast pivots to Asia

Hi everyone! This is Lauly, braving the 37 C heat in Taipei. A few days from now is the Autumnal Equinox, the fourth solar term of autumn in the traditional Chinese calendar, and yet I feel like the weather here lately is even hotter than summer. I was walking to a meeting with an industry source around noon yesterday and after five minutes I was already sweating so much I looked like I had gone for a swim.

The unbearable weather aside, I was invited to the 50th anniversary celebration of Liteon, a key Nvidia power management supplier, last weekend. The Taipei-headquartered company, founded in 1975, was the first listed electronics component maker in Taiwan.

Chairman Tom Soong said in the past most Taiwanese electronics makers only needed to compete against domestic peers, but now they have to step out of their comfort zone and face global competition, a challenge that requires a completely different level of strategic planning and resource allocation.

Chatting with industry friends over cocktails before the anniversary event reminded me that there are many tech companies in Taiwan that have or will soon mark half a century in business.

Leading Nvidia and Apple supplier Foxconn, celebrated its 50th birthday last year with an event attended by 500 guests, including Apple’s then-COO Jeff Williams. Liteon’s competitor Delta Electronics turned 54 this year.

TSMC, in case you’re wondering, is 38 years old. Williams, who described it as a bet for Apple when the company first placed orders with TSMC, attended the Taiwanese chipmaker’s 30th anniversary back in 2017.

Liteon’s event was unique in that it invited Cloud Gate Dance Theater, one of Asia’s leading contemporary dance companies, to perform Waves, a dance created to celebrate its own 50th anniversary in 2023. Waves is a work that explores human relations with AI and communications. I particularly loved the opening scene, where Cheng Tsung-lung, artistic director and choreographer of Cloud Gate, used large LED displays to illustrate the countless fine optical fibers attached to a dancer who moved slowly from the corner to the center of the stage. It was beautiful.

It is remarkable how many challenges Taiwanese tech suppliers have experienced over the past several decades, including a global recession in the late 2000s and unprecedented chip shortages during the pandemic. Now they are riding high in the AI era. The complexity and volatility of geopolitics, however, is making life more difficult, especially for the many small and medium tech suppliers that don’t have the same resources and agility as big players to cope with the changes.

Sidney Lu, chairman of Foxconn Interconnect Technology, which supplies connectors and cables to Nvidia, said his company has been aggressively expanding its manufacturing capacity globally, even reaching Morocco in north Africa.

But except for an upcoming plant in Saudi Arabia, Lu said FIT is now in “wait-and-see” mode when it comes to further overseas expansion due to the uncertain U.S. tariff policy.

“We won’t stop building our global footprint … but who knows what’s going to happen with the U.S.-China trade talks? We have to see things more clearly before making the next move,” Lu said.

In that moment, I think he spoke for the entire tech industry.

Finally folding?

Apple has held talks with suppliers about the possibility of building a test production line for a foldable iPhone in Taiwan, with an eye toward mass producing the device in India for release next year, Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang reveal.

The American tech giant is aiming for a 10% increase in total iPhone shipments next year and believes that introducing the long-awaited foldable model would help reaching the goal, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The plan in discussion is to leverage the engineering resources and ecosystem of Apple suppliers in Taiwan to build a mini pilot line that would verify the equipment and fine-tune the parameters and manufacturing steps for making a foldable iPhone, and then replicate the process in India for mass production.

The plan has not yet been finalized, but if realized, it would also help Apple speed up the shift of new product development away from China amid ongoing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

An awkward reliance

Meta’s supply chain for its artificial intelligence-powered glasses is increasingly consolidating around the powerful Chinese company Goertek, despite chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s increasing anti-Beijing rhetoric, the Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy and Eleanor Olcott write.

The Shandong-based supplier is responsible for manufacturing Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, as well as the forthcoming iteration of the U.S. tech giant’s glasses, according to people familiar with the matter. The new glasses, which feature a visual display, were unveiled on Wednesday at Meta’s Connect conference.

At the same time, Goertek has increased its stranglehold over the smart glasses industry through a deal-making spree: buying Shanghai OmniLight, which makes micro-nano optical devices used in smart glasses, and helping to finance a takeover of Plessey, a UK-based optics supplier to Meta.

Meta’s continued reliance on Goertek for its next-generation wearable devices stands in marked contrast to Zuckerberg’s hawkish turn on China in recent years, which has grown more pronounced during the second Trump administration.

Accelerating in Asia

VinFast, the high-profile Vietnamese electric vehicle maker, is betting on a three-pronged business strategy of automaking, charging infrastructure and taxi services to extend its footprint across Asia, according to this cross-border collaboration by Nikkei Asia’s Mai Nguyen, Sayan Chakraborty, Ramon Royandoyan and Rezha Hadyan.

The EV maker, which listed on Nasdaq in 2023, has recently begun taking orders in India, following entries last year into Indonesia and the Philippines last year, the two most populous countries in Southeast Asia. These moves represent a pivot from the company’s early focus on the U.S., where it has struggled to establish a foothold. Success in Asia is particularly urgent as the EV challenger has racked up billions in annual losses.

With heated competition in the region from Chinese EV brands, which boast advanced technologies and deep pockets, VinFast is betting big on its comprehensive EV ecosystem.

“We don’t just offer high-quality electric cars but also emphasize developing charging infrastructure and collaborating with partners in electric taxi services to create an integrated green mobility solution,” the company told Nikkei Asia.

Nvidia under scrutiny

China said global AI chip leader Nvidia has violated the country’s anti-monopoly law and it will further investigate the American chipmaker, a move likely to aggravate already strained tensions between Beijing and Washington, Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang writes.

The announcement on Monday came nine months after China’s State Administration for Market Regulation launched the antitrust investigation to Nvidia over allegations of violating conditions tied to the chipmaker’s acquisition of networking chip developer Mellanox.

The American AI chip champion has been caught in between the world’s two largest economies. Beijing in summer unexpectedly said to look into alleged security risks linked to Nvidia’s H20-the chips that it designed specifically for the Chinese market. The allegation came soon after the U.S. lifted a ban on Nvidia’s sales of H20 to China.

Apple eyes foldable phones and VinFast pivots to Asia

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