Automotive, telecom and power sectors will drive the growth rate of the semiconductor industry in the country, despite the decline in the global growth rate.
BANGALORE: Automotive, telecom and power sectors will drive the growth rate of the semiconductor industry in the country, despite the decline in the global growth rate.
"The automotive, telecommunication and power distribution segments represent a significantly growing market for microcontrollers in India", Steve Sanghi, President and CEO, Microchip Technology, provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, said.
"The global growth trend in the semiconductor market was less than optimistic. Though earlier the global semiconductor market had witnessed a double digit rise, in the past 5-10 years the growth had slowed down to a single digit (7-8 per cent) of late, throwing up major challenges for the industry," he said.
Though the Indian semiconductor market currently represents only one per cent of the global market of USD 280 billion, its growth rate is higher than that of the global average.
The growing demand for better energy management is expected to increase adoption of digitally programmable microcontroller solutions in motor, lighting and power related applications, he said.
According to Sanghi, India is set to play a key role in Microchip's future. The company plans to invest significantly in education and training programmes to help India meet the growing demand for microcontroller-based applications.
India is also important in terms of designing of products which indirectly contributes to 20-30 per cent of the company's revenues coming from sale of products.
"Our India design centre in Bangalore plays an important role in supporting Microchip in development of microcontroller to meet global demands. Its key success includes the PIC 18, PIC 24 and DsPIC DSC designs", said Sanghi.
India is also important from the point that several multinationals have set up their design resource hub in the country or outsourced their designing to Indian IT companies, which means great business potential for Microchip products.
Sanghi said Microchip has set up an international call centre and technical help desk in Bangalore a year-and-a-half ago and has also established a global marketing team here to support and launch local and worldwide marketing initiatives.
"We have nearly tripled our headcount to 150 engineers in the last two years and plan to augment the figure", he said refusing to reveal further details.
The company has trained about 10,000 engineers and engineering students in 2006 in its seminars, workshops and regional training cenres and university programmes, he said.
The company would train 400 engineers during a technical conference being held during this month. The training is aimed at helping engineers to use their products.
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