EMS and OEMs

Foxconn · Wistron · Quanta · Flex · Jabil · Apple · hyperscalers · Tesla

Electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies and original design manufacturers (ODMs) turn packaged chips into products, and AI servers now drive their growth: Foxconn's revenue reached NT$8.1 trillion in 2025, with cloud and networking at 40% of its business. Rack assembly reached Texas before the chips did: Wistron's $700 million Fort Worth plant began mass-producing NVIDIA GB300 racks in July 2026, while the GPUs, HBM and CoWoS packages inside still come from Taiwan and Korea.

Where an NVIDIA GB300 rack is built: the GPU die at TSMC in Taiwan, HBM3E stacks from SK hynix, Micron and Samsung, CoWoS-L packaging at TSMC in Taiwan, compute trays at Foxconn, Wistron and Quanta, and rack assembly and test at Wistron in Fort Worth, Texas, which began mass production in July 2026; only the last step is made in the US WHERE AN NVIDIA GB300 RACK IS BUILT 01 Blackwell Ultra GPU TSMC 4NP, TAIWAN MADE ABROAD 02 HBM3E stacks SK HYNIX, MICRON, SAMSUNG MADE ABROAD 03 CoWoS-L package TSMC, TAIWAN MADE ABROAD 04 Compute tray FOXCONN, WISTRON, QUANTA MADE ABROAD 05 Rack build and test WISTRON FORT WORTH, TX MADE IN US WISTRON FORT WORTH: $700M, 324,000 SQ FT, MASS PRODUCTION FROM JULY 2026. FOXCONN HOUSTON WAS TARGETED FOR EARLY 2026; OUTPUT NOT CONFIRMED.
Largest EMS
Foxconn
Foxconn revenue
NT$8.1T, 2025
Cloud share
40%, from 30%
US GB300 racks
Wistron Fort Worth
iPhones in India
About one in five
Hub
Packaging

EMS and OEM

OEMs Design and Sell; EMS Companies Build

A chip earns nothing until it is mounted on a board, assembled, loaded with firmware, tested as a system and shipped, and EMS volumes set the demand fabs and OSATs plan around.

Through the 1980s most electronics makers built their own products. From the 1990s, US companies moved assembly to contract manufacturers: Apple outsourced the iPod to Inventec and later Foxconn, and the iPhone needed volumes only Foxconn's Chinese campuses could deliver. The model holds for four reasons:

  • Capital: the OEM spends on design and brand, not factories.
  • Scale: the EMS company spreads fixed cost across many customers.
  • Know-how: line design, process and supply chain skills live at the EMS.
  • Location: production can move between countries as tariffs, labor costs and geopolitics change.

Japanese OEMs (Sony, Panasonic) kept more in-house; Samsung and LG combine large own factories with selective outsourcing; BYD, Xiaomi and Huawei mix approaches by product.

EMS operators

Taiwanese Companies Assemble Most of the World's Electronics

EMS operators
OperatorHQPositionMain plants
Foxconn (Hon Hai)Taipei, TaiwanLargest EMS; NT$8.1 trillion revenue in 2025, up 18%; cloud and networking 40% of the business, up from 30%; main iPhone and NVIDIA server builderZhengzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu; India, Vietnam, Mexico; Houston and Wisconsin
PegatronTaipei, TaiwanSecond iPhone assembler; consoles and networkingChina, Indonesia, Mexico, Czech Republic
WistronTaipei, TaiwanSold its China iPhone lines to Luxshare in 2021; NVIDIA boards and servers; Fort Worth GB300 plantChina, Mexico, Czech Republic, India; Fort Worth, Texas
Luxshare PrecisionShenzhen, ChinaFast-growing Apple partner: iPhone, Watch and AirPodsChina; India, Vietnam, Mexico
FlexAustin, TexasLargest non-Taiwanese EMS; industrial, automotive, medical, data center powerAbout 100 sites: Mexico, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, China, Brazil
JabilSt. Petersburg, FloridaAutomotive, healthcare, networking, cloud racksAbout 100 sites in North America, Mexico, Europe, Asia
SanminaSan Jose, CaliforniaNetworking, medical, defense; now owns ZT Systems' rack plants and builds AMD Helios racksUS defense sites; Mexico, Europe, Asia
CelesticaToronto, CanadaHyperscale switches and racks; aerospace and defenseCanada, Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, China
BYD ElectronicsShenzhen, ChinaConsumer assembly and automotive electronics for BYDChina; expanding abroad

Apple and Foxconn

Apple Owns No Factory That Builds an iPhone

Apple designs its A-series and M-series chips, software and industrial design, and Foxconn runs the assembly campuses built around Apple's lines. Foxconn Zhengzhou employed about 350,000 workers at launch peaks and turned out about 500,000 iPhones a day; the 2022 COVID lockdown there cut global iPhone output. Similar pairings: Dell with Flex, HP with Quanta, Nintendo with Foxconn.

Hyperscale ODMs

Hyperscalers Buy Their Servers From Taiwanese ODMs

Google, AWS, Microsoft and Meta set the performance, power, thermal and software requirements; the ODM designs the boards and racks, picks the supply chain and builds at volume for delivery straight to the data center. The racks themselves are covered by the supplier rings on DatacentersX.

Hyperscale ODMs
ODMHQMain customers
WiwynnTaiwanLargest dedicated hyperscale ODM: Microsoft, Meta, AWS
Quanta Computer (QCT)TaiwanGoogle and Meta servers; NVIDIA rack builds
InventecTaiwanHyperscale and enterprise servers for HPE and Dell
Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII)China / TaiwanLargest NVIDIA GB200 and GB300 rack builder
SupermicroSan Jose, CaliforniaRack integration in San Jose, Taiwan and Malaysia

AI servers in the US

AI Rack Assembly Is Coming to Texas First

  • Made in US
  • US planned
  • Made abroad
US AI server assembly
PlantOperatorBuildsStatus
Fort Worth, TexasWistronNVIDIA GB300 superchip boards and racksMass production from July 2026; $700M; 324,000 sq ft
Houston, TexasFoxconnNVIDIA GB300 racksTargeted for early 2026; output not confirmed
San Jose, CaliforniaSupermicroRack integration and testProducing

NVIDIA's April 2025 plan to build AI supercomputers in the US rests on these Texas plants. The silicon inside them does not move with them: the Blackwell GPU is made at TSMC in Taiwan (TSMC Arizona's first Blackwell wafer, in October 2025, is still packaged in Taiwan), the HBM in Korea and Taiwan, and the CoWoS package in Taiwan until Amkor Peoria opens in 2028.

Automotive tiers

Automotive Chips Flow Through Tier 1 Suppliers

Carmakers buy most electronics as finished subsystems from Tier 1 suppliers, which buy chips from Infineon, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Renesas and Texas Instruments.

  • Germany: Bosch, Continental, ZF.
  • Japan: Denso (Toyota group), Aisin.
  • Others: Magna (Canada), Valeo (France), Marelli (Italy and Japan), Hyundai Mobis (Korea).

A Tier 1 shortage hits many carmakers at once: in 2020 and 2021 the shortage began in mature-node logic, Bosch and Continental ran out of inventory and several OEMs halted lines. Tesla and BYD design their own ADAS compute and battery management, and zonal architectures cut the number of separate Tier 1 boxes; see ElectronsX zonal compute.

OEM custom silicon

The Largest OEMs Now Design Their Own Chips

  • Apple: A-series since the A4 in 2010 and M-series since 2020, all at TSMC on N5, N3 and N2; TSMC's largest customer.
  • Hyperscalers: Google TPU, AWS Graviton and Trainium, Microsoft Maia and Cobalt, Meta MTIA, all made at TSMC.
  • Tesla: its own FSD computer since 2019; AI5 at TSMC in Taiwan and Arizona and at Samsung Taylor, Texas; AI6 at Samsung Taylor; a planned Terafab in Grimes County, Texas. See Tesla Terafab.
  • China: 2020 US export controls cut Huawei HiSilicon off from TSMC; Huawei now builds at SMIC (see Huawei and HiSilicon). BYD designs automotive chips in-house; Xiaomi launched its own phone processor in 2025.

Each flagship chip's parts and plants are mapped on the chip supplier rings.

Chip content

An AI Server Carries 200 to 800 Times the Chip Content of a Phone

Approximate chip content per product
ProductChip content per unitMain chipsVolume
Flagship smartphoneAbout $180 to $250Application processor, modem, memory, storage, RF, camera, powerAbout 1.2 billion units a year
PC or laptopAbout $150 to $300CPU, GPU, memory, storage, networkingAbout 250 to 300 million
Battery electric vehicleAbout $1,500 to $2,000; $3,000+ with self-driving computeBattery management, motor control, ADAS compute, dozens of MCUsGrowing past 10 million
Combustion vehicleAbout $400 to $700Engine, body and infotainment controllers-
AI training server$50,000 to $150,000+Eight or more GPUs at $30,000 to $40,000 each, plus HBM, networking, CPUScaling with hyperscaler capex

Geography

Assembly Is Spreading From China to India, Vietnam and Mexico

  • China: the main campuses of Foxconn, Pegatron and Luxshare; ODM plants of Quanta, Wiwynn and Inventec.
  • India: Foxconn in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, plus Tata Electronics; about one in five iPhones was assembled in India in the year to March 2025.
  • Vietnam and Southeast Asia: Samsung phones, Foxconn, Luxshare and Pegatron lines.
  • Mexico: servers and racks for US customers under USMCA, including Foxconn and Wistron.
  • United States: AI racks in Texas (above); Flex, Jabil, Sanmina and Celestica sites for defense, medical and networking.

Policy detail is on US Reshoring.

Across the network

Where SemiconductorX Meets Vehicles, Robots and Data Centers

Record

Page Record

Covers
EMS and ODM operators, Apple and Foxconn, hyperscale ODMs, US AI server assembly, automotive tiers, OEM custom silicon, chip content, geography
Sources
Foxconn via Malay Mail (March 2026); Quartz on Wistron Fort Worth (July 2026); Reuters via All About Industries on Foxconn Houston (June 2025); Bloomberg on India iPhone share; company filings
Last verified
October 2026