Update: Lenovo not moving laptop production to Taiwan, anywhere else

We just got word from Lenovo that the Digitimes-originated story we ran yesterday about laptop production leaving China is completely false. Somehow it got out that Lenovo was moving all its laptop production to Taiwan, but apparently that couldn't be further from the truth. Lenovo isn't sure how the story got twisted in such a way, but assumes translation somewhere down the line was to blame. Sorry Taiwan, better luck next time, eh?

[OneLove @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:23AM]

Chinese gub-mint would hang them.

[Richard Lai @ Jan 22nd 2008 12:04PM]

let's party!

[J @ Jan 22nd 2008 12:10PM]

It never made sense anyways. Why would anyone move their production from a country that has cheap sweat-shop labor, to one that doesn't?

[Benjamin @ Jan 22nd 2008 12:46PM]

Nobody said that production would move from China to Taiwan. It was merely a matter of outsourcing production responsibility to Taiwanese companies because they happen to dominate the market by maybe 80 o 90%.

Taiwanese companies have their production sites in China.

So, the whole setup does make good (business) sense. But it would be politically - let's say - challenging.

[Chuck @ Jan 23rd 2008 11:08PM]

Why move production to a country; whose own companies already produce everything in China?
Taiwan already produces all their computers and cellphones in China.

[Jeremy Wu @ Jan 22nd 2008 12:46PM]

The correction is still somehow misleading.
From the original news, Lenovo is giving contracts to Taiwanese OEM/ODM companies, but not moving manufacturing to Taiwan. Qunta, Compal, Winstron (split from Acer), Inventec along with HonHai(Foxconn), Asus are all Taiwan OEM/ODM companies and made around 90% of laptops for the world. However, all their factories are all now in China, and hired more than 30 million workers in China. The last laptop manufacturing line was moved from Taiwan to China years.
Before made more misleading correction post, the author may have to know more of this industry.

[Jason C. @ Jan 22nd 2008 1:59PM]

As far as I know, currently there is only one company that keeps laptop production in Taiwan. Their products are all military scale laptops. All the companies had moved the production lines to China a long time ago (Even IBM did so :)). What Benjamin said is correct.

[Panama Jack @ Jan 22nd 2008 3:12PM]

Again, the environment is more complex with the OEMs and Sino-Taiwanese manufacturing .... parts of laptops are certainly still assembled in Taiwan, with final assembly having moved almost entirely over to the Mainland.

Fasinating story all around. I'd recommend two books beginning with the title "Silicon Dragon", one a recent piece on China and another more scholarly work on Taiwan. To think that my 4 year old Powerbook was ENTIRELY assembled on the little Island nation of Taiwan makes me happy. （是的。 我是台獨！）

[Arthur @ Jan 22nd 2008 5:48PM]

The author of this post simply knows nothing about the industry. There is no way that any Taiwanese-owned laptop plants will be moving back to Taiwan. They moved to China to save the cost (labor, land and etc).

Giving the contract of assembly from Lenovo to Taiwanese companies does not mean that the assembly must take place in Taiwan.

[Rafael @ Jan 23rd 2008 5:43AM]

I am sure that Lenovo is building something in Monterrey, Mexico, but not in Taiwan