Given its justifiably earned reputation, Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area is regarded as the best place to base a tech start-up.

High-profile technology companies like Apple, Alphabet, Cisco, Intel, Facebook and Netflix are all are headquartered here and there’s seemingly endless access to expertise and collaboration prospect.

There are, however, some tech hubs emerging to give the Valley some competition…

SHENZHEN China
Regarded as China’s Silicon Valley, Shenzhen has been transformed to a buzzing metropolis with an estimated population of over 12 million, since it was chosen as the country’s first “special economic zone” back in 1980, when it was home to around 300 000 people.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Today some 90% of the world’s electronics are manufactured in Shenzhen’ many thousands of factories, housing complete ecosystems for every stage of production. They build touchscreens, motherboards, cameras, etc, and most notably, the city is home to companies like Huawei, Tencent, and ZTE.

Apple manufacturer Foxconn, Kindle, Nintendo, Xiaomi and PlayStation all have factories here and prominent start-ups include DJI, OnePlus, and MakeBlock. To sum up Shenzhen, “Anything you have to do in days or weeks elsewhere,” says Steven Yang, CEO of battery technology company, Anker Innovations, “can be done here in hours.”

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