When Google launched the Nexus 7 tablet, its challenger to Apple’s iPad, the chairman of the Taiwanese company that designed the Nexus’s hardware gained only a moment in the spotlight.

As a Google executive stood on stage to unveil the device in June, he introduced Jonney Shih, chairman of Taiwan’s Asus, who stood up and waved at the crowd from his seat among Google’s leadership team in the front of the audience.

The choreography of the Nexus launch was emblematic of how many Taiwanese electronics companies, which build crucial components for products ranging from Apple devices to Hewlett-Packard notebooks, often struggle to move from being contract manufacturers to becoming consumer brands. As Taiwan is a relatively small nation that most of the world does not even recognise as a sovereign country, its businessmen are proud that groups based there design, assemble or manufacture parts for the lion’s share of the world’s personal computers, notebooks and tablets. Few of the companies that do that work, however, have broken out as brands in their own right.