TapTechNews August 9th news, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred near the Kyushu Island, the base of Japan's integrated circuit industry, yesterday (August 8th), which is expected to affect industries such as semiconductors and chemicals.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said that at 16:42 local time on August 8th (15:42 Beijing time), a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred in the sea area near Miyazaki County at the southeastern tip of Kyushu Island. The epicenter of this earthquake is located at 31.8 degrees north latitude and 131.7 degrees east longitude, and the focal depth is 30 kilometers. After the earthquake, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning for the Pacific coast of Kyushu Island and Shikoku Island, expecting a wave height of 1 meter (about 3.28 feet).
TapTechNews note: Kyushu is a major town in Japan's semiconductor industry. Following the name of Silicon Valley in the US, Kyushu has always been called Silicon Island in Japan.
Kyushu Island includes seven prefectures such as Fukuoka, Oita, Miyazaki, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima, and the GDP accounts for about 10% of Japan's total. The data as of November 2023 shows that the semiconductor output value in this area accounts for 56.3% of the national proportion in Japan.
Famous semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Renesas, Rohm, Sumco, Mitsubishi Electric, and Texas Instruments all have factories in Kyushu, gathering more than 1,000 semiconductor-related manufacturers.
According to the data sorted out by the Kyushu Economic Industry Bureau, in 2023, the semiconductor output value in Kyushu increased by 24.0% year-on-year to 1153.3 billion yen, showing growth for the third consecutive year. The annual output value exceeded 1 trillion yen for the first time in the past 16 years (since 2007) and reached 1034.5 billion yen.
TSMC's Kumamoto Plant 1 and Plant 2 have a total investment of more than 20 billion US dollars (about 3.14 trillion yen), and the Japanese government will subsidize up to 1.2 trillion yen for these two plants.
Sony started to build a new image sensor factory in Kōchi City, Kumamoto Prefecture in April this year;
Rohm will also invest 300 billion yen to build a new plant in Kunitomi-cho, Miyazaki Prefecture to produce power semiconductors and other products.
Sumco will invest more than 400 billion yen in Kyushu. In addition to expanding the production capacity of existing factories, it will also build a new factory in Yoshinokuchi-cho, Saga Prefecture.