This time last year, Asia’s tech supply chain went to Computex, the global industry’s giant trade show in Taipei, with the hope that Windows 8 would be its saviour. Few can be hoping for the same from the updated Windows 8.1, even if it brings back the Start button. The industry is in need of its own one-click reboot and has not found it yet.

It will not help the mood of visitors to the show, a more down-to-earth version of January’s US CES extravaganza, that Taiwan’s manufacturing activity has begun shrinking, according to yesterday’s purchasing managers’ survey, which recorded the fastest drop in almost two years. Asia makes about 90 per cent of the world’s notebooks and desktop motherboards, according to Barclays. Many of them are made in, or by companies based in, Taiwan. HSBC’s Asian electronics indicator, which leads the region’s tech cycle by about two months, just registered its first negative reading in seven months. Analysts at Barclays expect production this quarter to be below its seasonal average – for the fifth quarter in a row.

Yet the tech-laden Taiex is hardly Asia’s worst-performing index. Its 6.5 per cent gain this year beats Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Shanghai and Singapore, and its tech sector, which foreigners are more heavily invested in, is up 7.6 per cent. In forward price-earnings terms the Taiex, at 15 times, is in line with its average, or slightly over it if the post-Lehman swings are stripped out.