Asia pulls ahead as Europe lacks EMS strategy

Data presented at Evertiq Expo Berlin showed Asia widening its lead in EMS growth over Europe and the Americas, driven by large international OEMs building data centre infrastructure. Dieter Weiss said European EMS companies are struggling to offer the cost competitiveness, scale and technical capability needed for data centre hardware, with PCB sourcing already concentrated in Taiwan, Korea or China and assembly work following the boards.

Taiwan and China together account for 82.7% of global EMS and ODM production value, while Western companies represent 13.9% of revenues despite making up 50 of the 100 companies listed. Europe’s share stands at 2.5%. Taiwan (excluding Foxconn) added USD 85.5 billion in a single year, growing 42.3% to reach USD 287.5 billion, while Europe grew 5.8%, adding USD 1.1 billion and reaching USD 20.12 billion.

Weiss contrasted Europe’s lack of direction with Flex’s move to separate its AI business and Foxconn’s stated strategy. Eric Miscoll said regionalisation is replacing full reshoring, with Europe supplying Europe and the Americas increasingly supplied by the Americas, but materials and components still largely coming from Asia. Both were cautious on the rest of 2026 and into 2027, noting that defence growth will not fully offset automotive weakness and that PCB supply could tighten as data centre demand absorbs capacity.