It's been said often: Uninterested U.S. students aren't keeping up in science, technology, engineering and math, ultimately leading to a decline in skilled workers and U.S. competitiveness.

Wipro Technologies, which runs the global IT business of the IT-to-soaps conglomerate, is looking to increase its business from Japan and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.It sees a strong demand for intellectual property (IP) in areas such as semiconductors, System on Chip (SoC) and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) design coming from Japan and the APAC region, which is emerging as the new growth engine of the world. “Wipro owns a large portfolio of IPs in the semiconductor sector. Many large players in this sector are showing interest in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel. They are looking for ready IP in hardware and middleware. We see opportunity for growth in this region,” says A Vasudevan, vice-president (VLSI), Wipro Technologies. The semiconductor practice of the company is a part of Wipro Technologies’ Telecom and Product Engineering (TPE) Group. The TPE Group accounts for a third of Wipro Technologies’ revenue, which was Rs 3,249 crore during the second quarter of 2007-08. Japan and APAC currently account for only 10 per cent of the TPE revenue, whereas the US accounts for 65 per cent and Europe 25 per cent. “In the last two years, we have been witnessing growth in Japan and APAC. Clearly, this region will drive the growth for the company in the coming years as more companies start chip design services,” he said. Wipro recently formed a partnership with Oki, the wireless design arm of Oki Electric Industry (Japan), to tap opportunities in Japan. Wipro Technologies employs the largest number (2,100) of high-end chip designers, who work in the VLSI (very large-scale integration) segment in India. The company engages nearly 80 customers and works with semiconductor companies across industry domains, including automotive electronics, mobile devices, consumer electronics, industrial automation, telecommunications, computing, storage, medical devices and avionics. The semiconductor team is primarily based out of India (Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune), Europe (Austria, France and Germany), Singapore, Japan (Yokohoma), China (Shanghai) and the US (Mountain View). “Apart from these dedicated teams, based on clients’ needs, we frequently have teams working from any of Wipro’s 48 development centres across the world,” he added. “We have seen a steady growth in demand from clients for our services. Our team has grown at a rate of 30-35 per cent year-on-year in the past five years to reach the current team size of 2,100. We are offering high-end turnkey services in mixed signal and digital transmission for application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)and SoC development. We continue to see increasing demand from our customers for these services,” said Vasudevan. He said the company had been working on extending areas of expertise in the last few years. “Analog mixed signal is becoming more integrated into larger SoC solutions and we have built and expanded this capability in the last few years. We are providing radio frequency IP to customers in wireless technology areas such as wireless local area network (WLAN) and Bluetooth,” he stated.

Israel's electronics and software industries are expected to reach an annual market value of $32 billion in 2010, according to Elisha Yanay, chairman of the Israeli Association of Electronics and Software Industries (IAESI).

The electronics industry in India is undergoing a gradual, but inexorable, transition from a software-driven outsourcing model to one increasingly focused on growth and development of the domestic market. And as this shift occurs, the Rs.15,819.94 crore ($4 billion) embedded computing market is beginning to come into sharp relief.

The worldwide handheld device market posted its 15th consecutive quarter of decline in shipments, signaling either vendor intent to scale back production or exit from market entirely, or both. According to IDC's Worldwide Handheld QView, vendors shipped 728,894 handheld devices in 3Q07, approximately 1.5 percent more than the previous quarter, but 39.3 percent less from the same quarter a year ago.

The Indian semiconductor market is growing rapidly and it has attracted the attention of global majors. It is always a motivating factor for any developing economy like India, when some new area of growth springs up. India is home to quite a few booming industries right now—IT, telecom, manufacturing and now, semiconductor design.

C K Prahalad, the India-born management guru and academician, has been voted the world's most influential living management thinker ahead of hands-on managers like Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan and Richard Branson. Prahalad, who is the first Indian-origin thinker to claim the title, was ranked number three in last year's Thinkers 50 list brought out by Suntop Media.

US-based Magma Design Automation, which provides software for electronic design automation (EDA) tools in the semiconductor sector, plans to increase its research and development (R&D) output from India. It has three centers in India-Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi- which account for 25 percent of the company's R&D workforce. Its other R&D centers are located in the Netherlands, China and the US.

Small and medium enterprises in the IT industry want extension of STPI sops and exemption from fringe benefit tax and service tax on office space rentals. Mr Sankaran P. Raghunathan, President, IT-SME Association, said the government needs to set up IT parks for SMEs with nominal occupation charges and permit co-ownership of space at special economic zones (SEZs). Currently, only those companies buying at least 25 acres of land are allowed to set up operations in SEZs.

The British Government's annual R&D Scoreboard suggests research and development investment by private companies has shown little improvement over the past year and that the U.K., as well as most European countries, are continuing to fall behind their counterparts in the U.S.

Klaus Rinnen, an analyst with Gartner Inc., warns that a potential recession could spell trouble for the IC industry.

Mobile users in India will finally have access to high-end data applications on their mobile, including high speed interactive gaming and internet access, video conferencing, video streaming and various other multi-media features. The government on Monday unveiled the broad guidelines of its 3G policy. Telecom Minister A Raja announced that all the radio frequencies for offering third generation (3G) services, would be offered via an auction process, where all telcos — existing operators, licence holders and new international players — would all be allowed to bid.

Global sales of semiconductors is projected to increase by 3.8 percent this year, to $257.2 bn, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization, which has revised upwards its previous forecast for 2.3 percent growth for 2007, made in May.

At times of shorter time-to-market and shorter product lifecycles, outsourcing enables mobile phone OEMs to sustain business profitability. The commoditization of the mobile handset industry is reshaping market dynamics on a global scale as major OEMs struggle to keep pace with consumers whose demands for product replacement rate is growing higher and higher.

India debuted for the first time as home to one of the most powerful systems in the latest ranking of the Top 500 supercomputers released at the Supercomputing 2007 conference. The Computational Research Laboratories—a subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd in Pune, India— currently ranks as the world's fourth most powerful system, according to the latest list. It is based on a cluster of Hewlett-Packard 3000 BL460c systems that delivers 117.9 TFps. The systems are linked by a novel five-stage, 20Gbit/s Infiniband network using switches from Mellanox Technologies and Voltaire Ltd.

Warren East, chief executive officer of ARM Holdings, has won the prestigious Orange Business Leader of the Year Award at this year's British National Business Awards.

On Nov. 12, Intel shipped the first 45-nanometer microprocessors using high-k metal-gate technology. Whether to underscore the significance of the event or to reinforce that his famous law remains on track, Gordon Moore has become a central figure in the marketing of Intel's 45- nm technology. Moore describes the innovations as "the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon-gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s." Even Time magazine recognized the Intel Penryn microprocessor as one of the best inventions of 2007.

Sustaining its growth momentum, the GSM industry added 5.75 million subscribers in October, even as the total mobile user base reached 159.7 million. The industry had added 5.6 million users in the month of September.

MindTree Consulting on Wednesday announced in Bangalore that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100 per cent equity in TES-PV Electronic Solutions Private Ltd (Purple Vision), the India-based, fully-owned subsidiary of TES Electronic Solutions SA, the global electronics design and manufacturing services company based in France. MindTree will acquire Purple Vision in an all-cash deal of $6.55 million. Purple Vision has a strength of 150 employees.

Cambridge is in danger of losing its place as one of the leading high technology and electronics clusters in Europe for fledgling companies because it is too reliant on "hard technology" segments and is not particularly innovative when it comes to "soft tech" ventures, a report from Library House warns.

Traditionally, geo-tagging has been a complicated procedure, restricting the market to hardcore enthusiasts and professional users. However, new GPS and LBS advances are enabling this market while also driving consumer growth for GPS into cameras and laptops. As analysed in IMS Research's report "The Worldwide Market for GPS/GNSS-enabled Portable Devices-2007 edition" GPS is going to be integrated in a number of portable devices, such as laptops, PMPs, cellular and digital cameras. The overall market is set to increase 5-fold by 2011, with laptops and digital cameras representing over 20 per cent of the market.

Indian operations are clearly driving revenues and earnings of global telecom companies including Singapore Telecommunications, Maxis Communications, Vodafone Plc and Telecom Malaysia – all of which are present in the country.