Electronic Components
Electronic components are essential elements embedded in all electrical and electronic devices such as consumer electronics, industrial electronics and electrical appliances. This is reflected in its investment performance whereby the sub-sector contributed the lion’s share of investment in the electrical and electronics (E&E) industry at 62% (in 2021) and was primarily driven by foreign investment.
This sub-sector provides vital growth to the E&E industry due to the wide range of products it covers from semiconductor devices such as wafers integrated circuits (IC) and IC design and packaging activities to passive components such as capacitors, resistors, connectors, inductors, crystal quartz and oscillators. It also covers components such as storage media, disk drive parts, printed circuit boards (PCB), LED substrates and epitaxy, microcontrollers and other metal and plastic parts for E&E applications.
The semiconductor industry is one of the major contributors to manufacturing activities in Malaysia. The ecosystem has a higher presence of multinational companies (MNCs) compared to Malaysian companies. The strength and capabilities of local industry players are dense in the downstream of the semiconductor value chain and include assembly (advanced packaging) and test, as well as system integration.
Prospective investors should be heartened by the resilience of this industry in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a clear sign of industry players’ adaptability and agility. As the pandemic and governmental response caused tremendous disruptions in manufacturing operations – including E&E – it also resulted in significantly higher demand for specific E&E products which in turn spurred the overall growth for semiconductors. As of June 2022, 83% of the Malaysian population has been fully vaccinated, mitigating the effect of the pandemic and paving the way for growth opportunities in Malaysia’s E&E ecosystem.
We welcome more investments in the upstream and downstream semiconductor ecosystem activities involving IC design, engineering services and solutions to support wafer fabrication as well as the presence of strong and advance IC packaging industries in Malaysia:
a) Design IC / system
b) Wafer Fabrication/ Front End Activities
c) IC Packaging/ Back End Activities & Engineering Services Solution.
The presence of MNCs in Malaysia has brought the latest technological innovations and creation of skilled jobs. This has nurtured the local supply chain over the years and provided opportunities for Malaysia to be linked to the global value chain. The optimisation of local supply chains or vendors has also pushed Malaysia to be competitive and penetrate the global market.