Japan’s Rapidus bid for a chip renaissance will fail successfully

“You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the yield you’ll achieve in Japan,” legendary Sony co-founder Akio Morita told the equally formidable father of TSMC Morris Chang when the latter – still employed at Texas Instrument at the time – was looking into opportunities to build fabs in Japan. This was in the late 1960s, and Japan delivered. TI ended up building several well-yielding fabs, and many Japanese electronics companies would follow suit. By the late 1980s, Japan had become the world’s semiconductor powerhouse, sporting six of the top ten global chipmakers.

The lead eroded quickly. By the year 2000, only three Japanese companies were left among the semiconductor elite. Toshiba held on longest but had dropped out of the top ten by 2020, too.