The European Union hopes that its proposed blue-card program will provide a more attractive alternative to the U.S. green-card program, which critics say is plagued by backlogs, cumbersome processes, and insufficient quotas.

SP Software will start production of pre-recorded compact discs (CDs) from the end of November and plans to design semiconductor chips and manufacture printed circuit boards (PCBs) as it diversifies into new business areas. The CDs will be produced near Hyderabad by a fully owned subsidiary, SP Soft Digital Media, and marketed in India. The manufacturing facility is being set up at an investment of about Rs 10 crore. SP Software's multimedia division creates content for educational entertainment and gaming.

The fastest and most power-efficient computer chips in the world will be shipped out of Intel Corp.'s new Chandler plant beginning in early 2008, bringing consumers more speed and longer battery life in their desktops, laptops, servers and mobile devices.

India's embedded design industry emerged here earlier this month during the first Embedded Systems Conference here. Local observers said ESC was a watershed event for India's embedded industry.

Freescale Semiconductor has announced the opening of a design center in Chengdu, . The opening follows several recent expansions in the Chinese market, including the assembly and test operation in Tianjin and the operation in Shanghai, which has tripled in size since opening two years ago.

A company's or country's competitive advantages--whether in skills, salary levels, costs, expertise, infrastructure, or processes--don't last forever. Other companies and countries adjust and catch up under a crude, often painful form of arbitrage on both a microeconomic and macroeconomic scale.

The production capacity of Taiwan's semiconductor industry this year is likely to account for 18 percent of the total global output, the first time it will have surpassed the United States to take second place in the world after Japan, an analyst from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said Sunday.

From the perspective of technology development and manufacturing, India can be a tough read—especially compared with its booming neighbor China, the world's factory. India has a strong manufacturing presence in sectors like steel and automobiles, but it is far behind China in electronics and chip manufacturing. What India lacks in manufacturing, however, it makes up for in software development. It is especially strong in embedded software—a foundation that could prove increasingly important in the future.

After proving its mettle in IT services and chip designing, India appears set to script its next success story, this time in the semiconductor manufacturing space. The building blocks — that promise to position India in the global map to join the ranks of Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and the US — are beginning to fall into place.

The number of independent chipless, fabless and IC design houses in Europe continues to rise, despite a number of acquisitions in this sector, according to Future Horizons’ European Fabless Semiconductor Report.

Medea+, the pan-European collaborative research program focused on microelectronics, has announced that Catrene (Cluster for Application and Technology Research in Europe on NanoElectronics) is to be the follow on program to take electronics into the nanoscale era.

Global chip sales surged by 5 percent in September, to $22.6 billion from the $21.5 billion recorded in August, the fastest increase so far this year, following an excellent August, according to figures from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization.

Development of several product lines at NXP Semiconductors' home electronics division unit are being moved out of Europe, mostly to Asian countries, according to Christos Lagomichos, executive vice president and general manager of the division.

In the greater scheme of things and for the time being, engineers--especially in North America- -have it pretty good, at least according to their replies to the EE Times Annual Salary & Opinion Survey. Among the findings revealed by the almost 1,600 respondents to this year's questionnaire is that engineers in the United States have median earnings, including benefits, of $108,800, slightly higher than last year's median of $104,300. That compares with European respondents' median of just over $61,000. Japanese engineers reported median earnings of $65,400.

IC Insights’ The McClean Report describes the big shake-up in the 3Q07 top 10 semiconductor supplier ranking (see Figure below). Toshiba moved past TI and ST to become the third largest semiconductor supplier in the world while AMD moved into the top 10 ranking for the first time in its history.

The U.K. is continuing to lead in the number of chipless and fabless design houses in Europe, with France and Germany lagging behind, according to the latest report from Future Horizons into the sector.

According to a new report from NanoMarkets, the value of the thin-film and printed battery market will reach $5.6 billion by 2015. The report, "Thin Film and Printed Battery Markets" is the next in NanoMarkets ongoing series that covers the emerging markets for thin film, organic and printable electronics.

In a bid to encourage the IT growth in the state, the West Bengal has taken new initiatives, the foremost being the setting up of India Design Center.

By using reclaimed silicon, solar cell manufacturers can save between 30% and 90% of the energy they would have expended using new silicon materials, IBM said.

Synplicity Inc. has announced the inauguration of its new development facility in Bangalore. This facility is a part of the ongoing expansion of Synplicity in India and is located at the International Technology Park, Whitefield.

Contrary to popular perception, India, and not China, will add the most new subscribers to the international mobile telephony market, a just released research study says. The report, 'The next billion: How emerging markets are shaping the mobile industry,' released by the Bostonbased Pyramid Research, says that the global mobile market will go through unprecedented changes over the next few years, adding one billion new subscribers to the current 2.8 billion base over the next three years.

A strong holiday season in the U.S. and Europe and strong sales around the Chinese New Year will go a long way toward determining whether oversupplies of DRAM and logic chips are reduced and the global chip industry has a better 2008, a company executive said. If not, said Mike Splinter, president and CEO, Applied Materials Inc., 2008 does not look like a strong year for the semiconductor industry.

Venture capital continues to pour into India on the heels of new investments by Google Inc. and Cisco Systems in recent days. VenturEast said Wednesday (Oct. 31) it will create a $150 million fund in India. VenturEast, previously APIDC Venture Capital, said it will invest in both earlystage companies developing new technologies as well as companies using technology to gain market share.

EDA industry revenues grew 11.4 percent in the second quarter to more than $1.4 billion, the EDA Consortium (EDAC) reported on Wednesday (Oct. 31). EDAC said the industry's four-quarter moving average growth rate, which compares the most recent four quarters with the same period a year ago, stands at 14.6 percent. Revenues for the same quarter a year ago were just over $1.26 billion.

Seeking to boost its capabilities in IC design, the Brazilian government formally announced a major EDA deal with Cadence Design Systems Inc.

The electronics industry is doing very little to achieve ecologically sustainable growth, a goal that must start with semiconductor manufacturing, a U.S. executive said. Visiting here, Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), said the semiconductor industry continues to focus on increasing speed and performance rather than on more efficient energy usage. Instead, Splinter said future chip architectures must focus on optimal energy use. With increased use of semiconductors in consumer electronics, chips can play a larger role in ecological sustainability, Splinter added. Speaking to members of the India Semiconductor Association here, Splinter said global demand for consumer electronics makes sustainability a priority, especially since few manufacturers are focusing on the issue. "Sustainability is becoming a critical issue now that human activity-induced climate change is happening at a terrifying pace. The global electronics industry impacts energy consumption and waste in a very significant way and it must address the sustainability challenge head-on," Splinter told the group. Economic growth is driving demand for electronics in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Growing semiconductor content in consumer electronics is paralleled by growing energy demand. "Growing demand for electronics and the rising chip usage in electronics is causing more energy to be used, and this is bringing about more recycling challenges," Splinter said. "Waste management in the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing chain is a huge issue, but is not being looked at in the way it ought to. It is up to us to decide whether sustainability is a threat or an opportunity," Splinter said. Along with energy efficiency, the IC industry needs to use more renewable energy sources in its production facilities. Splinter challenged manufacturers to reduce total energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years. "Every transistor in every chip and the chip architecture itself needs to use less energy. While the ability to make chips more energy efficient is there, the design gains are used for performance rather than for energy savings. There just needs to be a significant change in microprocessor architecture, with the clear target being energy efficiency," Splinter said. The chip manufacturing equipment vendor is aiming to cut its own energy use by 20 percent, and has decided that its new products will be 20 percent more energy efficient than equipment they replace. In October, Applied opened a photovoltaic R&D center in Germany.

The global semiconductor industry continues to grow and evolve in line with the burgeoning demands for electronic gadgets. And, India is playing an important role on both the demand and the supply side of this market. While the country is emerging as a demand center for all kinds of semiconductors, numerous companies have established themselves as major players in the semiconductor design space. The fact that 9 of the top 10 global fab-less companies, such as Qualcomm, Broadcomm, Altera, and LSI, and 23 of the top 25 global semiconductor companies have their development and engineering centers in India employing close to 100,000 engineers bears testimony to the country's tab 'Semiconductor Design Hub'. Currently, the demand for electronic gadgets is escalating in Asian countries, and India is the latest to get on the bandwagon. Over the next decade, the market for consumer electronic goods, mobile phones, and industrial products, such as automotive electronics, PCs, and UPS will witness robust growth. For example, mobile-phone sales have already exceeded 6 to 7 million a month, the highest incremental growth yet on date globally. In recent months, the PC market has been growing in excess of 20 percent and industry expectation is that the market for personal computers will continue to experience robust growth in the foreseeable future. The market expansion for electronic equipment has pushed the demand for semiconductor devices in India to the inflection point, where local fab facilities become justifiable. Accordingly, the Indian State has initiated necessary policy initiatives to attract investments in fab facilities.
State incentives are necessary for attracting investments in the semiconductor fab facility, and the Indian State has initiated the necessary policy initiatives. This is largely due to the perseverance of Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) and some of its members. The Special Incentive Package Scheme (SIPS) announced recently by the Indian State is aimed at kick starting semiconductor wafer fabrication facility (fab units) and its associated downstream or upstream investments (ecosystem units), such as the manufacture of semiconductor grade silicon or wafers, liquid crystals, and others. The State incentives include 20 percent of the CapEx made during the first 10 years for facilities that come up in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) or 25 percent in the case of facilities that come up in Non-SEZ units. In the case of fab, the investment threshold is pegged close to $550 million and almost fifty percent of that amount is for ecosystems. Following the announcement of the Semiconductor policy in April 2007 and the guidelines last month, the Andhra Pradesh State, in conjunction with ISA, organized a Forum titled "Semiconductor Manufacturing Clusters and Development of the Ecosystem" last week in Hyderabad, India. Members of ISA, the nodal policy and implementation agencies of the State, prospective investors, and other stakeholders participated in the Forum and invited ARC Advisory Group as the 'knowledge partner'. Andhra Pradesh has drawn up schemes to establish a 'Fab-city' spread over 1,200 acres on the outskirts of Hyderabad. This is in addition to the 'Hardware Park' and the 'Electronic Hardware SEZ' which are already operational. While the Indian State and ISA have acted in the best interest of growth of the semiconductor industry in India, it is the semiconductor companies that ultimately invest. Investment decisions entail taking into consideration various other factors, such as global demand, and existing capacity and its utilization. Currently, the opinion among global semiconductor industry leaders is that the existing capacity is not a constraint for growth. And this situation can be overcome if electronic equipment manufacturers, addressing the country's market, discover the compelling need to source semiconductors within the country. The State and the industry association have taken the initial correct steps, and soon the other forces will begin to play their part.
India presents an unparalleled opportunity for growth of the electronic and semiconductor industries in the coming years, and the semiconductor companies are aware of this.