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International Trade/Offshore Manufacturing/Sourcing/Export/Import/Consulting Why Singapore?By Ken Anderberg
The island city-state of Singapore is positioning itself as a high-tech alternative Asia/Pacific corporate location to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Mumbai, India. With a tightly controlled and thriving economy, Singapore is investing heavily in its IT infrastructure, and has a heavy emphasis on training its workforce for the global IT economy.
As an example, many Singaporeans are provided scholarships to attend U.S. universities to obtain primary technical and engineering degrees at such institutions as Stanford, Purdue and Cornell. In order to ensure that their talent returns to the state, scholarship recipients agree to up to six years working for the government after they receive their degree.
Singapore is noted as a transportation hub between Asia and the Near East and Middle East. It is also home to a wide variety of manufacturing operations, many in the technology area. The state's gross domestic product in 2005 was $117 billion, 6.4% above the previous year, with nearly $40 billion of that in the high-tech sector (8.9% over 2004). It also boasts more than 110,000 high-tech trained workers, mostly seemingly in their mid-20s and well educated.
In addition to information communications, the state is expanding its efforts at growth in chemicals, biomedical, sciences, precision engineering and electronics. Additional focus is being placed on the healthcare, nanotechnology, photonics, energy, environmental and intellectual property industries.
An important high-speed transmission network that hubs at Singapore is a key ingredient to these growth plans. Submarine cables connect to move more than 20 countries, with 9.8 Gbps capacity to the United States, 260 Mbps to Europe and 20 Gbps to the rest of the world. The cables carry a total of 27.6 Tbps transmission capacity, an attractive interconnect advantage when trying to lure business investment.
That communication capability, combined with investment incentives, location, and the relatively low-cost, educated workforce has brought a number of high-profile global companies to Singapore. Motorola, for example, has 2,500 employees in Singapore, where it manufactures its 3G phones and 2.5Gan-3G software. Sixty percent of the company’s 3G phones are manufactured here.
According to Jay Anderson, Motorola vice president of sales and operations, Asia, "It is cheaper to manufacture and ship our products worldwide from Singapore than from any other location." He also cites the excellent telecommunications connectivity available in Singapore.
Lucas Films Animation has set up its own data center in Singapore to initially develop a new 3D animation TV series, says Christian Kubsch, general manager of the firm's Singapore office. Intellectual property (IP) protection provided by Singapore laws was a key ingredient to locating in the Lion City, he says, particularly compared to Chinese alternatives, where IP piracy is rampant.
Kubsch does, however, say the firm has issues with the transmission capabilities from Singapore to the United States for its high data content files.
ESPN's Asia/Pacific headquarters, ESPN Star Sports, is also located in Singapore, where Managing Director Jamie Davis cites no such transmission difficulties. The company broadcasts 13 channels to 26 countries in the region. Its latest initiative is to provide content to mobile devices, such as smart phones and PDAs.
Also using Singapore as its Asia/Pacific base, as well as for manufacturing, are; IBM, Sybase, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, McAfee, Symantec and Siemens.
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