Taiwan. Texas Instruments reached an agreement with the island’s government to build a new semiconductor factory in Taiwan. The first integrated circuits were released in August 1969. By 1980, it had produced a billion integrated circuits, flooding the world. Meanwhile, in 1973, Singapore also became a destination for Texas Instruments and National Semiconductors to establish their own integrated circuit factories. By the late 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines) would employ tens of thousands of American semiconductor companies.
