Do you mean on the plastic outside? Like the badge on the laptop like “Asus” or the apple light-up logo? That’s not a high tech industry in the same way. Very few companies and countries have the institutional knowledge to design cutting edge computer chips (cpu/gpus, but also stuff like wifi and the display), but a much larger group of companies are able to design computers with purchased components. There’s still design involved, mostly to do with heat management. Then there’s assembly, sometimes done by the people who designed the computer (not the components), but often it’s handled by a third company that is better at it. But the thing is, two different laptops can be designed with very different design philosophies and skill, but if they use the same components, it’s fair to classify them as essentially equivalent products.
Korea being able to design and assemble their own laptops doesn’t mean they have the high tech institutional knowledge to make all the components that go into them.
This is by the way even true of Intel and Apple. They’re all dependent on other mature industries. Intel doesn’t know how to do the chip fabrication, TSMC doesn’t know how to do the Lithography, and ASML doesn’t know how to make appropriate lenses.
This is assuming Korean laptops are designed and assembled in Korea. Many are. But they have access to the Chinese market, so wouldn’t be anything stopping them from paying a Chinese manufacturer to create a line of Korean computers with their own plastic.
And that is still assuming the computers are unique in some way. But you can just buy a white label computer that is specifically sold to have a logo printed on it by the customer. In the worst case where you have absolutely no access to industry, you can just buy any computer and just scratch off the logo and replace it with your own.
Do you mean on the plastic outside? Like the badge on the laptop like “Asus” or the apple light-up logo? That’s not a high tech industry in the same way. Very few companies and countries have the institutional knowledge to design cutting edge computer chips (cpu/gpus, but also stuff like wifi and the display), but a much larger group of companies are able to design computers with purchased components. There’s still design involved, mostly to do with heat management. Then there’s assembly, sometimes done by the people who designed the computer (not the components), but often it’s handled by a third company that is better at it. But the thing is, two different laptops can be designed with very different design philosophies and skill, but if they use the same components, it’s fair to classify them as essentially equivalent products. Korea being able to design and assemble their own laptops doesn’t mean they have the high tech institutional knowledge to make all the components that go into them.
This is by the way even true of Intel and Apple. They’re all dependent on other mature industries. Intel doesn’t know how to do the chip fabrication, TSMC doesn’t know how to do the Lithography, and ASML doesn’t know how to make appropriate lenses.
This is assuming Korean laptops are designed and assembled in Korea. Many are. But they have access to the Chinese market, so wouldn’t be anything stopping them from paying a Chinese manufacturer to create a line of Korean computers with their own plastic.
And that is still assuming the computers are unique in some way. But you can just buy a white label computer that is specifically sold to have a logo printed on it by the customer. In the worst case where you have absolutely no access to industry, you can just buy any computer and just scratch off the logo and replace it with your own.