Motorola Inc, the world's second-largest maker of mobile phones, shut its semiconductor design unit in Taiwan as it moves work to China and India where wages for engineers are lower.
Motorola fired about 50 chip-design workers last week in Taiwan, Singapore and at a facility that will stay open in Hong Kong, spokeswoman Gloria Shiu said in a telephone interview from Beijing.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola will divide their work among operations in China, India and Australia.
Chipmakers including Texas Instruments Inc and Intel Corp have set up design centers in India to tap the 130,000 English-speaking graduates each year from about 250 engineering colleges.
STMicroelectronics NV, Europe's largest semiconductor maker, said last month it plans to spend US$100 million over the next five years to set up two more chip design centers in India.
"We've previously said we would consolidate some of our design work," Shiu said. "The work will now go to Hong Kong, Australia, India and China."
Motorola's chip unit in Taiwan focuses on micro-controllers, while the Singapore and Hong Kong centers design semiconductors used in cellular phones.
Motorola shares fell 2.3 percent to US$17.66 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading on Monday. The shares rose 62 percent last year.
The jobs transfer is a blow to Singapore's efforts to promote electronics development and design in the city state.
Motorola is set to move the work to India and China to lower its business costs and better meet the needs of its customers, Singapore's Today newspaper reported earlier. Motorola, which has been in Singapore for 30 years, employs 2,500 people involved in high-end manufacturing, research, development and software design, the paper said.
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
CHINESE EXPORT CURBS: A dispute between China and the Netherlands could halt chip supply, affecting vehicle production, US and European auto associations said Groups representing major automakers late on Thursday warned that a chip disruption stemming from a dispute between China and the Dutch government could quickly affect US auto production. Automakers and their suppliers received notice from chipmaker Nexperia (安世半導體) last week that it could no longer guarantee delivery of its chips, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association said, adding that manufacturing could be significantly disrupted. In the US, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai and nearly all other major automakers, urged a quick resolution. “If the shipment of automotive chips doesn’t resume — quickly — it’s going to
RSS