India's Mobile Phone Production Rises to 110 Million in 2015-16: Prasad

[dray]

You are quoting an article from February. I am quoting an article from last month.

You are quoting an article that itself says that the chip fab plans have been delayed, cancelled due to over capacity, and the focus has been shifted to chip design.

We are talking here only about fab, not design. Design is an altogether different story.

Some portions from your links:

"A spokesperson for Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Migdal Haemek, Israel) confirmed JP's withdrawal in a email response to EE Times Europe.

"Indeed JP has withdrawn their part of out consortium. They had the role of investing money in this project. At this point, we are looking for other investors who may have interest in joining this deal," the spokesperson said. "


"Meanwhile the Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (HSMC), which is linked to STMicroelectronics and Silterra, Malaysia is still expected to move from 90nm down to 28nm and 20nm at a proposed location in Prantij, near Gandhinagar, Gujarat at cost of about 253 billion rupees (about $3.8 billion).

However, the HSMC project has received the boost of reported support from Lisu Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.. Local reports said that Su had met with Ravi Shankar Prasad, Indian telecom minister, and discussed matters linked to semiconductor policy and its HMSC fab proposal. According to the reports, AMD wants to help transform India into an electronics manufacturing hub".


"A third plan to foster a wafer fab in India comes from Cricket Semiconductor LLC, which wants to create an analog and power pure-play foundry near Indore in Madhya Pradesh. This plan came to light in 2015 but still requires details on funding, technology and customers".


The article I posted is suggesting to focus more on chip designing than manufacturing.

 

[danger007]

Fab is a very general terms, and is used to even denote places where large statues are made or molded. Any fabrication unit can be called a fab.

But, here we are talking specifically about a semiconductor fab, and to be even more specific, a IC fab.

As for that, your articles give no new insight.

Your first article is generally about the Hyderabad property market near the fab city--- no indication of actual activity happening there.

Your second article is about the acquisition of a solar company. Not only is this not a greenfield project, this facility fabricated solar modules, not ICs.

Your fourth article is so old, it must never have been posted. It is from 2008, and lists 4 companies whose fabs (the companies you listed in your post) are to be opened. Since, the article is from 2008, all the companies would already have opened if they were seriously planning to open. Not only that, one of the company cited which is supposed to be opening a fab, has even been acquired as in your own second cited article. Finally, none are IC, or even semiconductor fabs.



You are quoting an article from February. I am quoting an article from last month.

You are quoting an article that itself says that the chip fab plans have been delayed, cancelled due to over capacity, and the focus has been shifted to chip design.

We are talking here only about fab, not design. Design is an altogether different story.

Also, I'm not arguing against funding chip designers and fabs. They must be funded, so we can increase our know how, and set up an industrial base, with the required skill set, an eco-system of sorts.

But to expect, that this is where India is heading is completely misleading.

India is not entering the big league of either fab companies or chip design houses in the next 10 years.

If you read my posts above, you will understand.. i clearly mentioned not yet materialised.. yes im very familiar with semiconductor industry.. related to my core field..

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Some portions from your links:

"A spokesperson for Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Migdal Haemek, Israel) confirmed JP's withdrawal in a email response to EE Times Europe.

"Indeed JP has withdrawn their part of out consortium. They had the role of investing money in this project. At this point, we are looking for other investors who may have interest in joining this deal," the spokesperson said. "


"Meanwhile the Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (HSMC), which is linked to STMicroelectronics and Silterra, Malaysia is still expected to move from 90nm down to 28nm and 20nm at a proposed location in Prantij, near Gandhinagar, Gujarat at cost of about 253 billion rupees (about $3.8 billion).

However, the HSMC project has received the boost of reported support from Lisu Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.. Local reports said that Su had met with Ravi Shankar Prasad, Indian telecom minister, and discussed matters linked to semiconductor policy and its HMSC fab proposal. According to the reports, AMD wants to help transform India into an electronics manufacturing hub".


"A third plan to foster a wafer fab in India comes from Cricket Semiconductor LLC, which wants to create an analog and power pure-play foundry near Indore in Madhya Pradesh. This plan came to light in 2015 but still requires details on funding, technology and customers".


The article I posted is suggesting to focus more on chip designing than manufacturing.

I have been reading about trade and manufacturing issues now for years. For what it's worth, you can take my word that India is not going to get into the semiconductor fabrication list any time soon. I will be happy to be pleasantly surprised though.

As I have said, manufacturing is a ladder. Focus on assembly right now, then comes basic components, then comes other components etc. Semiconductors are basically the last item on that ladder.

The reason why I am trying to convey this is that without a good strategy India will never proceed well enough. India has been poor at strategy, and strategic thinking. The first aspect of strategic thinking is to recognize ground realities, and create both an aspirational, yet realistic plan.

Not only that, the technology they are saying, 20 nm, is possessed by very few companies in the world, almost none of which will share it, because they run their own fabs.

China is just now beginning to enter the semiconductor game, that is 20 years after it started producing on a mass level phones. And the way to do is, not by producing one or two fabs, it takes a whole lots of them for different applications.

And this is the way you go about it:

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329926

In one sentence: China will build half of all the fabs of the world in 2016/17, and will be responsible for half of all fab equipment spending in that time.

Now why is strategy required?

Let's take the case of textiles.

In textiles, the apparel sector, that is literally sewing and producing shirts etc. is one which has lower levels of skills, and capital required; but the processed raw material sector is more capital intensive.

The world of apparel sector is shaking, largely due to labor costs in China, which is forcing the industry to retreat into Bangladesh and Vietnam.

We want to attract that pie, so we need a good strategy. If we impose higher duties on raw materials, like Nylon, or man-made fibres etc. the producers won't come here, because they are getting freer access to international markets in countries like Vietnam, and Bangladesh. And this is what happened during Congress times. I am pleased that BJP is taking the right steps.

It was a travesty that little countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam today export more apparel than us!

Look at that graph, the most recent data is from 2014, where both Bangladesh, and Vietnam overtook us in Apparels. The gap would only have increased.

 

[dray]

India is not entering the big league of either fab companies or chip design houses in the next 10 years.

The article I posted says this:

“In terms of chip designing, India has no shortage of skills. We already have two development centres here and about 500 people are already designing chips in India,” said Finbarr Moynihan, General Manager for Corporate International Sales at Mediatek.

And the articles you posted don't mention words like "Dropped", "cancelled", etc.

And mobile phone assembling and chip designing and/or manufacturing are not necessarily related to the same 'ladder'.

**Apparels can be discussed in a separate thread.

 

[dray]

It has to be done very strategically. For example, duties on import of phones is a welcome step due to these reasons:

1. The production of phones is already searching a place to move, this can incentivize it to move to India.
2. China and other countries have no incentive in stopping the production from moving, because they are already prepared to let it move, since their labor rates can't handle this kind of production any more.

But, imposing duties on smartphone components would be SUICIDE for the Indian electronics sector.

You can read in your own article, that today, India is essentially doing the bottom most work in the production ladder, mainly the assembly of the phone. If you impose duties on components, which Indian manufacturers can not competitively produce, then you are going to kill the assembly market as well, since the people who are trying to assemble phones would just go elsewhere, like for instance, Vietnam, or Bangladesh, or Indonesia, or Ethiopia.

Similarly, in textiles, India needs no duties on import of fibres, and yarn, but one on apparel, so that we can start apparel production in the country.

The duty has been slapped on mobile phone imports, not on components, otherwise why companies are looking for manufacturing in India to avoid the duty? Let's have some logic in the discussion.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

The duty has been slapped on mobile phone imports, not on components, otherwise why companies are looking for manufacturing in India to avoid the duty? Let's have some logic in the discussion.

When did I deny that. That was basically for some other members who were proposing (or seemed to be proposing) a blanket import duty on everything.

 

[dray]

India's smartphone revolution: 35 units, 37,000 jobs in 2 years
Overall mobile phone production was about 68 million in 2014, increased to 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million in July 2016
Kiran Rathee | New Delhi July 25, 2016 Last Updated at 08:30 IST

India has seen about 35 new smartphone factories in the past two years, with a production capacity of about 18 million devices a month, since the central government had announced a tax rationalisation for electronics products to boost local electronics manufacturing.

The new manufacturing units have generated employment for 37,000 people and led to fivefold increase in capacity. According to an official in the electronics and information technology ministry, overall mobile phone production capacity was about 68 million units in 2014, 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million till July this year. With India becoming a global hub for mobile phone manufacturing, the government has set a target of 500 million devices a year by 2020, riding on an incentive policy and availability of good talent.

“Production capacity has reached 350-400 million in July 2016. The government has set up a task force with a vision to produce 500 million phones by 2019-20 and create five million jobs. The aim of the initiative is to export 120 million phones,” Pankaj Mohindroo, Indian Cellular Association (ICA) founder and president, told Business Standard. He said by 2020, the industry could reach Rs 3 lakh crore.

“With the target, for which the task force is working and we have achieved initial success, manufacturing activities have gone up in the country,” Mohindroo added.

The new units that have come up include that of Foxconn with five facilities, Micromax, Lava International, Intex Technologies, Videocon, Vivo Mobile, Celkon Mobiles and Flextronics.

Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the mobile phone production in the country has doubled on the back of reforms announced in the 2016-17 Budget. He said due to the initiatives, especially duty rationalisation, there had been a remarkable acceleration in the field of electronics manufacturing.

To boost domestic manufacturing, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed a hike in levies on components and peripherals like batteries and chargers. However, it was later rationalised after the industry said the hike in levies will hurt manufacturers as some of these parts have to be imported. The government had removed basic customs duty (10 per cent) and special additional duty (four per cent) proposed on charger, adaptor, batteries and wired headsets.

A ministry official said that apart from phones, the reforms were helping domestic manufacturers to get into other areas like medical devices, consumer electronics, broadband equipment and set-up boxes.

SEEING GROWTH

• New manufacturing units have employed 37,000 people, a fivefold increase in capacity
  
• Mobile phone production capacity was about 68 million in 2014, which has increased to 350-400 million in July 2016
  
• Govt has set a target of 500 million devices a year by 2020
  
• Govt has set up a task force with a vision to produce 500 million phones by 2019-20 and create 5 million jobs
  
• The aim of the initiative is to export 120 million phones

http://www.business-standard.com/ar...ts-37-000-jobs-in-2-years-116072500005_1.html

 

[Athen]

We need a processor fabrication plant..ASAP!!

India's smartphone revolution: 35 units, 37,000 jobs in 2 years
Overall mobile phone production was about 68 million in 2014, increased to 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million in July 2016
Kiran Rathee | New Delhi July 25, 2016 Last Updated at 08:30 IST

India has seen about 35 new smartphone factories in the past two years, with a production capacity of about 18 million devices a month, since the central government had announced a tax rationalisation for electronics products to boost local electronics manufacturing.

The new manufacturing units have generated employment for 37,000 people and led to fivefold increase in capacity. According to an official in the electronics and information technology ministry, overall mobile phone production capacity was about 68 million units in 2014, 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million till July this year. With India becoming a global hub for mobile phone manufacturing, the government has set a target of 500 million devices a year by 2020, riding on an incentive policy and availability of good talent.

“Production capacity has reached 350-400 million in July 2016. The government has set up a task force with a vision to produce 500 million phones by 2019-20 and create five million jobs. The aim of the initiative is to export 120 million phones,” Pankaj Mohindroo, Indian Cellular Association (ICA) founder and president, told Business Standard. He said by 2020, the industry could reach Rs 3 lakh crore.

“With the target, for which the task force is working and we have achieved initial success, manufacturing activities have gone up in the country,” Mohindroo added.

The new units that have come up include that of Foxconn with five facilities, Micromax, Lava International, Intex Technologies, Videocon, Vivo Mobile, Celkon Mobiles and Flextronics.

Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the mobile phone production in the country has doubled on the back of reforms announced in the 2016-17 Budget. He said due to the initiatives, especially duty rationalisation, there had been a remarkable acceleration in the field of electronics manufacturing.

To boost domestic manufacturing, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed a hike in levies on components and peripherals like batteries and chargers. However, it was later rationalised after the industry said the hike in levies will hurt manufacturers as some of these parts have to be imported. The government had removed basic customs duty (10 per cent) and special additional duty (four per cent) proposed on charger, adaptor, batteries and wired headsets.

A ministry official said that apart from phones, the reforms were helping domestic manufacturers to get into other areas like medical devices, consumer electronics, broadband equipment and set-up boxes.

SEEING GROWTH

• New manufacturing units have employed 37,000 people, a fivefold increase in capacity
  
• Mobile phone production capacity was about 68 million in 2014, which has increased to 350-400 million in July 2016
  
• Govt has set a target of 500 million devices a year by 2020
  
• Govt has set up a task force with a vision to produce 500 million phones by 2019-20 and create 5 million jobs
  
• The aim of the initiative is to export 120 million phones

http://www.business-standard.com/ar...ts-37-000-jobs-in-2-years-116072500005_1.html

What device is that in the pic??

 

[dray]

We need a processor fabrication plant..ASAP!!


What device is that in the pic??

All devices look same these days.