Outside of Singapore, regional tech companies are mostly final-assembly contractors and semiconductor packaging companies.

CNN: Money & Investing

The upcoming vote pits the newly reconstituted board and turnaround management team at Tessera, a technology development and licensing firm that invented chip-scale packaging (CSP) technology for improved semiconductor performance in the 1990s and is now blazing a trail in advanced semiconductor interconnect technology, against a board takeover attempt by the activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP.

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It is home to the world's No. 2 and No. 3 chip-packaging and chip-testing companies, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Siliconware Precision (SPIL) .

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One can envision these new players in the industry will assume leadership in specific roles within the value chain: Intel-like semiconductor companies building the LED chips, and equivalents of a PC motherboard manufacturer like ASUS packaging the chips into devices that will be used in a variety of end-use lighting applications.

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