SINGAPORE’S ELECTRONICS CLUSTER

The electronics cluster is a key component of Singapore’s manufacturing sector. Over the years, Singapore’s electronics cluster has moved up the value chain to high value-added activities. This can be seen at two levels. First, within individual segments of the electronics cluster, there has been a shift towards higher value-added activities. For example, in the data storage segment, the production of commodity disk drives has made way for high-end server drives and disk media. Second, the electronics cluster as a whole has seen high value-added segments rise in importance (Exhibit 1). For instance, the share of the data storage segment declined from 33 per cent in 1997 to 9.5 per cent in 2007. In contrast, the share of the semiconductors segment has tripled as Singapore moved into new areas such as 12-inch wafer fabrication and DRAM chip production. In 2009, the semiconductors segment will gain more diversified capabilities when NAND flash memory production, typically used in the latest consumer electronics products such as MP3 players, comes on-stream.

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