In this paper, we analyze the transformation of vertical division of labor in the semiconductor industry. In the semiconductor industry, the vertical division of labor has progressed due to the emergence of a business model called foundries which specializes in contract production that could be described as “disruptive innovation” in the 1980s. Then, under the COVID-19, as the demand for semiconductors has increased and the semiconductors became in short, TSMC has attracted increasing attention as a key player in the supply of semiconductors in the world. This situation is no longer something like “suppliers from late industrialized countries grow up in the vertical division of labor governed by companies in developed countries,” as the Global Value Chain theory or the Global Production Network theory described. In the divides, the form of vertical division of labor is shifting to a new phase where the supplier holds the casting boat. This is the first aspect of the transformation of the vertical division of labor in the semiconductor industry. Moreover, developed countries such as the United States and Japan, where vertically integrated semiconductor companies once prospered, are eager to attract TSMC factories in order to incorporate semiconductor production bases into their own countries. That is, the vertical division of labor, which was in the form of “a company in a developed country consigns production to a supplier located in a low-cost late developed country,” has changed to a phenomenon in which a supplier in the late developed country has a production base in a developed country at the request of a developed country. This is the second aspect of the transformation of the vertical division of labor in the semiconductor industry.
