During Evertiq Expo Berlin, in4ma’s Dieter Weiss and Maraike Haas, alongside EMSNOW’s Eric Miscoll, had just presented five years of data showing Asia lapping Europe in EMS growth. Off stage, they went further.
The numbers had already made the case. All major regions, five years of data, and a gap that kept widening. Asia was pulling away from both Europe and the Americas in EMS growth – not because of a single event, but because of a structural shift that had been building for years. After their presentation, Evertiq took the opportunity to dissect what the data actually meant, together with Dieter Weiss and Eric Miscoll.
The question was direct: why is Europe lagging so far behind?
The AI build-out is passing Europe by
Weiss went straight to the root. The companies driving the current growth cycle are large international OEMs building data centre infrastructure – and they have two requirements: cost-competitive solutions and manufacturers large enough and technically capable enough to handle the work. European EMS companies are struggling to meet either condition.
The electronics architecture for data centre hardware is simply beyond the capability of most Western manufacturers, which means the PCB is already being sourced in Taiwan, Korea, or China, and the assembly order follows the board.
The revenue figures bear this out. Taiwan and China together control 82.7% of global EMS and ODM production value. Western companies – despite accounting for 50 of the 100 companies on the list – represent just 13.9% of revenues. Europe’s share alone stands at 2.5%.
The 2024 vs.2025 growth figures show the gap widening in real time. Taiwan (excluding Foxconn) added USD 85.5 billion in a single year – growing 42.3% to reach USD 287.5 billion. Foxconn itself grew 20.3%, adding USD 43.4 billion. China/HK grew 12.3%, adding USD 14.8 billion. The Americas grew 11.2%, adding USD 9.4 billion to reach USD 93.6 billion. Europe grew 5.8%, adding USD 1.1 billion, reaching USD 20.12 billion – last among all major regions.
Miscoll added a dimension that the headline figures don’t fully capture. The rankings shown on stage tracked where companies were headquartered, not where they manufactured. Some of the US-based companies counted in the Americas column have large factories in Asia and increasingly in India. “The picture is probably a little more severe if you look at it from that perspective,” he said.
