Supermicro to shift production from China to US$300 million plant in Taiwan to rebuild its brand reputation
Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/03
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
Supermicro X11SAE Mainboard. (By Wikimedia Commons)
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — In order to rebuild its damaged reputation after news broke late last year that spy chips had been allegedly planted in its motherboards, Supermicro is planning on shifting production of its motherboards from China to a factory in northern Taiwan.
In October, Bloomberg reported that tiny rice-sized chips had been implanted on Supermicro server motherboards enabling the Chinese government to spy on servers operated by Apple, Amazon Web Services, and nearly 30 other companies. The chips were allegedly designed to enable a People’s Liberation Army unit specializing in hardware attacks to steal data from U.S. companies without being detected.
Although Supermicro, Apple, Amazon, and the Chinese government have denied that such devices have been planted in the motherboards, the damage to its reputation was significant. The motherboard maker has since had difficulty winning orders from US customers and those with ties to the US government, reported Techspot.
To allay customers’ concerns about security, Supermicro has started to both ask its partners relocate production to other countries and Supermicro is handling more of its own production outside of China, including a new factory in Taiwan. Previously, Supermicro outsourced most of the production to suppliers in China, while it mainly only handled assembly. [FULL STORY]
