India in the news
23 July 2007
Indian correspondent Anand K. Sethi takes a look at two recent developments affecting India at the moment.
The past weeks have brought two very interesting news items as far as India is concerned. The first relates to the launch in the US of the great new ‘gizmo’, the I-Phone. The second, not as exciting by comparison, but yet important for the Indian electronics industry, and more specifically the EMS business, is the announcement by Sanmina –SCI about the establishment of a major facility in India.
As we are all aware, the much awaited Apple I-Phone was finally made available for sale in the US on June 29th, 2007 with eager buyers standing in line for many hours to get their hands onto the latest ‘must have’ gizmo. But these were not the only ‘eager beavers’.
A whole bunch of, for want of a better term, ‘Electronics Surgeons’, had a greater interest in dissecting the innards of the I-Phone to find out what was inside, rather than the mundane business of using one of the phones. These ‘worthies’, had literally within a few hours ripped open the instrument(s) and made a listing of the more important bits and pieces inside.
From the information gathered by me, it would appear that the main parts inside are the following:
Digital baseband, radio transceiver, power management: INFINEON.
Display / Graphics, connecting chip: NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR.
Touch Screen Module: BALDA.
Touch Screen Display: EPSON / SHARP.
Applications Processor / NAND Flash / DRAM Chip: SAMSUNG.
Audio Codec: WOLFSON.
Bluetooth Chip: CSR.
Wi-Fi Chip: MARVELL TECHNOLOGY.
Cellular Network Power Amplifier: SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS.
Processor Chip: ARM.
Additional Processor: INTEL.
Now, the I-Phone is unlikely to be available in India for many more months, possibly only late in 2008, but yet there is some smugness evident. The reason apparently is that most of the companies listed above have major design centres in India, a fact not otherwise well publicised. So, let us make a listing of the locations in India of these centres:
INFINEON: Bangalore
NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR: Bangalore
SAMSUNG: Bangalore
WOLFSON: Bangalore.
CSR: Bangalore.
MARVELL TECHNOLOGY: Gurgaon (Near Delhi) and Pune.
SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS: NOIDA (Near Delhi) and Hyderabad.
ARM: Bangalore. Also, multiple Design Partners in India.
INTEL: Bangalore.
So the excitement generated by Hyderabad-based Pinexe Systems designing the chip for Apple’s I-POD is now reaching a higher crescendo! Let someone else do the slog work of actually assembling the product. The brainy part is done here.
Late in the month of June, 2007, Sanmina - SCI Corporation announced that it will establish its largest contract manufacturing facility at the Oragadam Special Economic Zone in Chennai (formerly Madras), surpassing the Mexican facility which is spread over 86 acres.
Spread over 100 acres, the proposed new facility with an investment of about $60million, is expected to directly employ about 20,000 people at peak in about five years.
The Chennai facility will assemble electronic equipment of various types including, industrial and medical instrumentation, defence, aerospace, communications, computing, multimedia, automotive etc. According to a spokesperson of the company, the facility will offer end to end manufacturing services including design and engineering to major technology companies in the region. All the products will be made to the exacting standards of various OEM’s.
Most interestingly, Sanmina – SCI intends to make the Indian facility the hub for development activities to support its business worldwide.
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