EM remains a bit of a mystery I agree, but our CEO's comments about it shed a bit of light on its capabilities. How they can promise and deliver these capabilities is unclear.
This is how they were introduced to SH:
"... EM’s innovative CIDM models (Community Integrated Device Manufacturing) has brought to bear significant commercialization experience and cutting-edge facilities to deliver AP’s groundbreaking digital loudspeaker, in record time. EM has already made a substantial investment of many millions of dollars to produced chips which are already routinely used in the company’s development, customer prototypes and demonstrations systems. EM is expected to commence volume production of our digital MEMS speaker within the first quarter of 2022. Under the terms of the agreement EM is guaranteeing AKP long-term resilient supply of tens of millions of digital loudspeaker chips per year. ..."
"... Our current MEMS and packaging vendor EarthMountain, permited us to reveal that over the past year or so our ongoing collaboration activities included expanding theirproduction capabilities and capacity. EarthMountain has been able to secure two additional MEMS fabrication facilities, both of which utilize an 8” wafer platform which as reported provides a substantial increase in production capacity while deriving considerable benefit from utilizing newer and higher precision equipment. Additionally, and of significant importance is the redundancy gained by having our wafers produced at multiple and independent facilities. ..."
So, as you say, they do not say they own a FAB. Maybe not, but they can use one to do everything the company has needed, and when they want more capacity they can ring in two additional even bigger FABS. That is impressive clout I think.
Maybe other countries could consider doing something like they do!
(20min delay)