Tokyo Electron Ltd is seeking to build a team of chip engineers in India to take advantage of the push by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for more semiconductor manufacturing in the world’s most populous country.
Japan’s biggest chip equipment maker plans to hire and train local engineers in or around 2026, with their first task to provide technical services to Tata Electronics Pvt, Tokyo Electron chief executive officer Toshiki Kawai said.
Robotics would play a growing role and local staff would be provided with in-person and remote support from Japan, he added, declining to specify how many people the company would need to hire.
Photo: Bloomberg
India is amping up efforts to attract international electronics companies and chipmakers to set up facilities within its borders, under a plan by the Modi administration to close the tech gap with advanced economies.
Apple Inc is accelerating its production and sales of iPhones in the country, while Tata Group and others are investing billions of dollars in semiconductor fabrication plants.
The government is providing incentives to support those ventures, which would need machinery and know-how from companies like Tokyo Electron.
The Tokyo-based company has set a target of 10,000 new hires globally over the next five years, as more countries race to build chips at home. Tokyo Electron supplies equipment to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc and Intel Corp, and its forecast for the business year to March points to record revenue and operating profit.
It also expects overall chip demand to double by 2030, boosted by artificial intelligence, autonomous cars and a push toward energy efficiency and decarbonization.
That is even as the US pressures Japan to further tighten restrictions on exports of advanced chipmaking gear to China, part of an extended effort to curb its technological progress.
US officials have sought to limit Tokyo Electron’s ability to service some of its machines in China and have talked of invoking the foreign direct product rule, which allows Washington to control sales of products made anywhere in the world if they use even a small amount of US technology.
Such moves would not affect global appetite for chipmaking machines, 61-year-old Kawai said.
“The importance of semiconductors remains unchanged. There will always be investment somewhere,” he said.
Tokyo Electron said earlier this month it would help train Tata Electronics’ workforce on chip-making equipment and support its research and development.
Modi’s administration has so far approved more than US$15 billion of semiconductor investments, including US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc’s plan for a US$2.75 billion assembly facility.
Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd is also seeking to partner with Indian billionaire Gautam Adani on a US$10 billion fabrication plant in western India.
Sales to China, which surged to about 50 percent of Tokyo Electron’s revenue in the June quarter, would likely fall to less than 40 percent in October-March, and comprise about 25 percent to 30 percent in the future as overall sales of equipment rise, Kawai said.
“India won’t replace the Chinese market. It would be growth in addition to China,” he said.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS