National—
On March 30th, 2024, Thai national media reported that a large private international company, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, announced an investment of more than 2.57 billion baht to establish a manufacturing factory in Thailand.
The manufacturing factory was reported to be complete and open for operation by March 2025. The new Sony factory was to produce sensors used in autopilot vehicles that detect pedestrians and obstacles.
Sony anticipated that the new factory would increase its production rate by up to 70% and create job opportunities for more than 2,000 positions.
However, the primary manufacturing processing required a high level of expertise in Japan. In Thailand, it required a massive number of laborers to produce and modify wafers, a thin slice of a semiconductor, into microchips using manual machines.
Although the demand for wafers used in computers and smartphones supply was low, in the latest vehicle technology, wafers were in increasingly high demand as they could also be used as autopilot and driving assistants.
Sony would potentially increase competitive capability as labor costs in Thailand were considerably lower compared to other countries and would greatly benefit the company.
