On June 3, 2025, GigaDevice officially announced the establishment of its international headquarters in Singapore. This strategic move not only marks an important step in the company's global layout, but also arouses widespread concern in the industry about the changes in the global semiconductor industry pattern. In the context of the continuous restructuring of the global supply chain and the intensification of technological competition, GigaDevice's move can be described as a forward-looking layout, which reflects the deep logic of the rise of China's local semiconductor companies in the global market.
Singapore: A strategic hub connecting the world
As the core economy of Southeast Asia, Singapore has always been the first choice for global high-tech companies to set up regional headquarters. According to the World Bank's Doing Business 2024 report, Singapore ranks second in the world out of 190 economies, with an overall business score of 95/100, demonstrating strong policy stability and rule of law efficiency.
More importantly, Singapore plays a "bridge" role in the global semiconductor industry chain. Global leaders such as TSMC, GF, Micron, and Applied Materials have R&D or manufacturing bases here. According to the 2024 data of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the R&D investment of the local technology industry increased by 18% year-on-year, attracting more than 100,000 technical talents to gather and form a complete ecological chain.
For GigaDevice, this not only helps it obtain first-line innovation resources, but also quickly connects with emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, India, and even Europe and the Middle East. At the same time, the tax incentives provided by the Singapore government are particularly impressive: corporate income tax relief for strategic high-tech enterprises for up to 15 years, and a tax deduction of up to 250% for compliant R&D expenditures, which is expected to effectively reduce their overseas operating costs and release more R&D and market resources.
GigaDevice: From technology leadership to globalization
GigaDevice is a representative chip design company in China that integrates memory and MCU as its core products, and its products continue to occupy a leading position in the global market. According to Yole Intelligence's 2024 report, GigaDevice has a global market share of 20.4% in the SPI NOR Flash field, ranking second, second only to Cypress in the United States. The cumulative shipment has exceeded 27 billion units, which are mainly used in consumer electronics, industrial control, wearable devices and automotive electronics.
At the same time, in the field of 32-bit general-purpose MCUs, the company has launched 63 series and more than 700 models, with a cumulative shipment of more than 2 billion units, becoming one of the most representative MCU suppliers in China. In the field of automotive electronics, GigaDevice's products have entered the supply chain of leading manufacturers such as BYD, Geely, and Great Wall, providing chip support for their body control, cockpit systems, intelligent driving assistance and other modules.
Its R&D investment also reflects its strong independent innovation capabilities. In 2024, the company's R&D expenditure will reach 1.25 billion yuan, accounting for more than 13% of total revenue, a year-on-year increase of 23%. The R&D team has more than 1,000 people, of which more than 60% have a master's degree or above, which provides a solid foundation for the construction of its core IP library, embedded system optimization and new product iteration.
Pictured: GigaDevice announced the opening of its international headquarters in Singapore
Great changes in the industrial pattern: the enlightenment of TSMC's 98.15% market share
At the beginning of 2025, TSMC released an annual report saying that its market share in the wafer foundry market for advanced processes of 7nm and below is as high as 98.15%. Although this data refers specifically to the advanced process segment, it reflects a trend that cannot be ignored: the global advanced manufacturing resources are extremely concentrated, and if design companies cannot establish stable cooperative relations with leading foundries such as TSMC and Samsung, they will be in a weak position in production capacity and technology iteration.
It is precisely for this reason that GigaDevice set up its headquarters in Singapore. Singapore, located in Southeast Asia, is geographically close to TSMC's Taiwan factory in terms of supply chain, and has close ties with TSMC's packaging, testing and manufacturing cooperation network in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and other places, which is convenient for the company to strengthen in-depth collaboration with TSMC, UMC, GF and other manufacturers to ensure the stable supply of key product production capacity.
In addition, the Singapore headquarters will also become the forefront of GigaDevice's overseas customer technical support and localized customized services, promoting products to enter emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe more quickly, and realizing the upgrade from "export" to "local service".
Addressing Global Challenges: From "Follower" to "Value Leader".
Although GigaDevice has a strong technology and market foundation, its globalization process still faces severe challenges.
The first is the fierce international competition in the memory and MCU tracks. According to IC Insights statistics, Samsung's revenue in the global memory market will account for more than 35% in 2024, more than 8 times that of GigaDevice. NXP, Renesas, Infineon, etc. have long-term customer stickiness and technical accumulation in the field of automotive-grade MCUs. NXP has a monopoly position in the global automotive MCU market with a market share of more than 30%.
The second is the rise in geopolitical risks in supply chains. According to the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) report, there will be 12 trade or geopolitical conflicts affecting IC delivery worldwide in 2024, an increase of 40% year-on-year. For a chip design company with Fabless as its core, supply chain stability is the key to its global success.
Therefore, GigaDevice's breakthrough path lies in three points:
1. Product differentiation: Strengthen application-oriented products such as low power consumption, high integration, and strong anti-interference, especially the customization capabilities for scenarios such as the Internet of Things and battery-powered equipment.
2. Overseas brand building: Enhance brand recognition in the international market, and improve customer stickiness by establishing in-depth cooperative relationships with system manufacturers, such as reference designs and platform-level support.
3. Diversified supply chain system: build a supplier network covering East Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe, establish a flexible manufacturing and inventory management mechanism, and avoid dependence on a single origin.
5. Industrial spillover effect: reshape the regional semiconductor ecology
GigaDevice's Singapore headquarters is not only a strategic fulcrum for its own development, but also a spillover effect on the regional and global semiconductor ecosystem.
From a regional perspective, the new headquarters is expected to attract at least 50 upstream and downstream companies to follow up in the next 3-5 years, including EDA software vendors, packaging and testing service providers, module factories, etc., to form a "GigaDevice Industry Ecosystem" with Singapore as the core. According to the preliminary assessment of the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore, the project can directly create about 1,000 technical and management jobs and indirectly drive industrial investment of more than S$500 million.
From a global perspective, China's local semiconductor companies are increasingly going global, and chip design companies represented by GigaDevice, Weir Co., Ltd., AMLogic Semiconductor, etc., have begun to move from "technology substitution" to "innovation leadership", challenging the traditional monopoly pattern of Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea. This industrial relocation will prompt the global semiconductor industry to accelerate open cooperation and promote the cross-border flow of technology, capital and talent.
Conclusion: What the next global competitor looks like
The establishment of GigaDevice's Singapore international headquarters is a key piece of the puzzle for its global strategic system, and it also means that Chinese chip companies are no longer satisfied with a single breakthrough in the new round of global competition, but build overseas competitiveness with systematic and long-term thinking. As a "game-breaker" in the wave of industrial transformation, GigaDevice is steadily moving towards the goal of "world-class chip brand".
In the context of the drastic reshaping of the global semiconductor pattern, this is not only a leap for the company itself, but also indicates the improvement of China's semiconductor power in the global discourse system. We have reason to expect that a stronger, more open and more collaborative global semiconductor industry is slowly taking shape, and GigaDevice is an important force that cannot be ignored.
