A employee inspects a circuit board for a smartphone at Dixon Applied sciences’ Padget Electronics Pvt manufacturing facility in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. Dixon boasts a market worth of greater than $2.5 billion and the capability to provide about 50 million smartphones this yr. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs
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Qualcomm is already designing chips in India because it faucets on the nation’s pool of gifted engineers, Qualcomm India’s president mentioned in an unique interview.
“We already have chips that are actually designed completely end to end in India and we are shipping those globally,” Savi Soin, president of Qualcomm India, advised CNBC.
The American chip large designs semiconductors and wi-fi telecommunications merchandise. Qualcomm is finest recognized for its Snapdragon processors which energy a few of the prime Android smartphones internationally.
Like all chip designer, Qualcomm does not manufacture its personal chips. As a substitute, it relies on chip manufacturers resembling TSMC, Samsung Electronics and GlobalFoundries.
“We have more engineers in India now than we have anywhere else in the globe,” mentioned Soin. “We have a lot of engineers here doing end-to-end chip design.”
The chip design course of is “highly complex” because it requires “years of R&D, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and thousands of engineers,” mentioned Semiconductor Industry Association in a report.
An integral a part of the semiconductor manufacturing course of, chip design defines the necessities for the chip’s structure and system, in addition to how particular person circuits might be laid out on the chip.
Local media reported in January that Qualcomm is increasing its Chennai operations with a brand new design middle specializing in wi-fi expertise.
The 1.77 billion rupee ($21.3 million) funding can even help Qualcomm’s dedication to the Indian authorities’s imaginative and prescient of “Make in India” and “Design in India.”
“We saw India 20 years ago as a great R&D center of excellence and a great pool of talent. We’re seeing India as a great market, as [a] great opportunity,” Soin advised CNBC’s Sri Jegarajah.
“We are now in discussion with a lot of semiconductor back-ends as well as manufacturing that India is trying to set up. Our CEO committed two years ago that if India sets up semiconductor manufacturing, we will actually help bring volume to that,” mentioned Soin.
India’s chip push
India’s semiconductor ambitions have made large strides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities approving three semiconductor plants in Gujarat and Assam with investments of greater than $15 billion.
“India already has deep capabilities in chip design. With these units, our country will develop capabilities in chip fabrication. Advanced packaging technologies will be indigenously developed in India,” in keeping with a authorities assertion on Feb. 29.
India wants to become a major chip hub to compete in opposition to the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea, and has been wooing overseas chip makers to arrange operations within the nation. Nations resembling India stands to profit as world chipmakers look to diversify operations amid geopolitical uncertainty.
To spice up home manufacturing capabilities and exports, India has introduced billions of dollars worth of production-linked incentives to “attract investment” in key areas and cutting-edge expertise in addition to to make India “an integral part of the global value chain.”
India goals to be one of many prime 5 semiconductor producers globally within the subsequent 5 years, Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister of electronics and knowledge expertise, railways and communications, told CNBC in March.
“What we have seen is – for example, the PLI benefits – it certainly has brought manufacturing of more and more smartphones into India,” mentioned Soin.
“So we have seen good incentives on IT, telecom and telecom equipment that’s manufacturing here. We are seeing some discussions around the design elements. So we’re hoping that more and more things, some elements of our products that use our technology, get designed in India,” mentioned Soin.
Apple is among the firms that has diversified a few of its manufacturing operations to India amid U.S.-China geopolitical tensions. Apple now assembles about 14% of its iPhones in India, which is twice the quantity it produced there final yr, in keeping with a Bloomberg report.
Google plans to start manufacturing of its Pixel smartphones in India by second quarter, Nikkei Asia reported February.
