Apple Inc assembly partner Pegatron Corp (和碩) is making preparations for its first plant in India, adding to a large influx of foreign tech investments in the country this year.
Last month, the Indian government set out a US$6.6 billion plan to woo the world’s top smartphone manufacturers, offering financial incentives and ready-to-use manufacturing clusters.
Pegatron is now setting up a local subsidiary and joining fellow Taiwanese electronics assemblers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Wistron Corp (緯創), who have already been making some iPhone handsets in southern India.
With a number of factories in China, Pegatron is the second-largest iPhone assembler and depends on Apple for more than half of its business. Like its peers, it would set up in the south of India, said a person familiar with its plans who asked not to be named.
Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), and Wistron are looking to expand their operations in the country, and Pegatron’s entry could be seen as a defensive move to protect its share of budget iPhone manufacturing, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew Kanterman said.
Pegatron could uphold its iPhone SE assembly market share, which might have grown from a 50-50 split with Hon Hai, Kanterman said.
India offers a vast pool of skilled labor as well as a domestic market of a billion mobile connections. Only about half of those are smartphones, leaving untapped potential that is attractive to growth-hungry global brands like Apple, Samsung Electronics Co, Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀).
For assemblers like Pegatron, exports would also be an enticing opportunity, especially at a time of worsening trade relations between Washington and Beijing making it imperative to have a diverse geographic base.
Smartphones are a focal point for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-touted Make in India program. Indian Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the goal is for brands and manufacturers to transport the entire supply chain to the country, not just the end-stage assembly.
Quoted by local media, Prasad said India wants not only the “bridegroom” but also the “wedding procession.”
India would become a global manufacturing hub for both components and the complete assembly of smartphones and other devices, said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of the Indian Cellular & Electronics Association.
The group’s three dozen members include Apple, Hon Hai, Google, Wistron, Oppo and others.
“The focus is shifting from making for India to exports and the $400 billion electronics manufacturing that India is targeting by 2025 will be dominated by exports,” Mohindroo said by telephone from New Delhi.
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
Qualcomm Inc is strengthening its partnerships with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) in Taiwan as it expands its presence in the artificial intelligence (AI) computer market, CEO Cristiano Amon said in Taipei yesterday ahead of the annual Computex trade show. “Historically we’ve always been a very big customer of TSMC, and we continue to be,” Amon said during a media Q&A session. “For chip manufacturing, we’re among the largest fabless [semiconductor designers],” he said, noting that Qualcomm, a leading provider of mobile and AI-enabled chipsets, ships about 40 billion components every year, with TSMC being
‘FAILED EXPORT CONTROLS’: Jensen Huang said that Washington should maximize the speed of AI diffusion, because not doing so would give competitors an advantage Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday criticized the US government’s restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, saying that the policy was a failure and would only spur China to accelerate AI development. The export controls gave China the spirit, motivation and government support to accelerate AI development, Huang told reporters at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The competition in China is already intense, given its strong software capabilities, extensive technology ecosystems and work efficiency, he said. “All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” he said. “The US
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek has been diversifying its product lines to minimize operational risks as mobile chips remain the company’s biggest revenue source MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest supplier of smartphone chips, yesterday said the tape-out process for its first 2-nanometer chip would take place in September, paving the way for volume production of its most advanced chip, likely to be its next-generation flagship smartphone chip, around the year-end at the earliest. MediaTek has been leveraging advanced process technologies from its foundry partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), to build its flagship mobile phone chips, a segment it once relinquished and then recovered four years ago as it released its Dimensity series. In the semiconductor industry, a tape-out refers to the