Yet another electronics policy for India?

India has once again announced an Electronics Policy, and frankly, I’ve lost count, how many times! Nevertheless, one hopes that this policy somehow takes off, and helps India get off the ground!  There are certain points in the policy that are worth a relook.

One, the setting up of electronic manufacturing clusters. This has been time and again stressed and re-stressed. Will it come around, this time? Let’s wait and watch, if it happens this time!

Two, as per the policy, there is a proposal for setting up two semiconductor wafer manufacturing fabrication facilities. Where? As far as one knows, there is hardly any infrastructure around to support even one semicon fab! Some people may say, Bangalore, but well, they are welcome to say that! As for people buying more of ‘domestically manufactured electronic goods’, it remains to be seen!

Three, back in 2007, when the SIPS program was announced, there were great expectations! If you recall some time ago, I mentioned that the Indian semiconductor policy, announced back in 2007, had supposedly expired on March 31, 2010! Then, the Indian industry came up with recommendations that included extending the Indian semicon policy up to March 2015! So, what happens to that? Or, is it dead and buried?

Four, back in 2007, the ‘ecosystem units’ were clearly defined as units, other than a fab unit, for manufacture of semiconductors, displays including LCDs, OLEDs, PDPs, any other emerging displays; storage devices; solar cells; photovoltaics; other advanced micro and nanotechnology products; and assembly and test of all the above products. What’s happening now?

Five, does all of this mean that the role of India-based semiconductor companies as a percentage of the semiconductor market globally, will improve? Or, do we take India as a system/gadget maker and thus, as a percentage of that market??

Six, fabrication is increasingly expensive, much involved and the actual global fabrication players are declining and will be about three to four companies. There is talk of 450mm fabs across the world! Have we even heard a word from India?

Okay, so let’s say, India will have two fabs? By when? What process technology? If it is a 450mm fab, India can very well kiss goodbye to this decade, at least. And, India continues to slip back in having a ((proper) fab!

IT in smaller companies need help too!

According to Steve Bailey from CommVault, IT managers are said to be walking on a tightrope between resources and data growth! Conversely, the resources for CIOs are much lesser, compared to the data growth, which is explosive!! Find all of this hard to believe? Well, ask around!

IT storage professionals are actually considered to be somewhat of ‘tightrope walkers’, given the fact that they have to perform tremendous balancing acts while driving projects — all along with the budget allocated to them.

As per a survey conducted by CommVault, the IT organizations are prioritizing managing data growth (i.e., data reduction) first, followed by network and equipment, disaster recovery, applications/software, data backup and recovery and backup of virtual server environments. Managing data growth remains a major budgetary priority for the IT managers. Besides, all of the data has to be managed by organizations without the benefit of adding IT staff!

There’s hardly anything that anyone, let alone the IT staff, can do to curtail the data growth. And now, the advent of mobile devices, virtual servers and the increasing use of social media have added to the creation of even newer and massive data!

By the way, have you visited media houses, small IT shops or companies, small retail stores, and so on? IT protection is, most of the times, way of the mark. Why, there are even media houses that have poor IT infrastructure! In fact, some of the offices even had their web site spammed quite often in the past. I have little idea right now, but I do hope they have improved their IT defence. Some commentators have even expressed the need for next-generation firewalls as the need of the hour!

Apparently, managing the IT side of things or the IT infrastructure is considered not so important by many of the small organizations. Don’t you think that it is necessary that they too protect their organizations? Forget about the absence of IT storage professionals in such organizations!

If one may add, vendors either seem to charge these companies exorbitantly, or, they are least bothered if such companies get into ‘IT trouble’. The fact is: such companies are small in nature, and do not have that much money to spend on IT. Or, at least, that’s not their main game! It takes a great deal of convincing on part of vendors, I am sure, to get such companies to protect their IT infrastructures.

So, how do the CIOs and the IT managers manage all of this exploding data (and devices, of course)? Certainly, this calls for a seamless process — from backup to recovery to archiving data. There is a need to develop and have a single platform to manage and protect data. This needs to be done across heterogenous applications, hypervisors. operating systems and infrastructure — from a single console.

Well, how do you help the smaller companies, especially those located in smaller and sometimes, remote areas and cities? The answer is simple: vendors really need to take upon themselves the trouble of going down to such places, meet companies, and at least, sound them out on the IT solutions on offer. That will be a start!

Sachin boldly goes where no man has gone before! Hail, King Sachin!!

Sachin Tendulkar, India. Courtesy: ESPNCricinfo.

When I was giving up playing the game of cricket in 1989, my focus was drawn toward a snap on the cover of Sportsweek (now closed), which had the faces of two newcomers to the Indian team that was chosen to tour Pakistan. One was Salil Ankola and  the other – Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar!

Today, in the league match vs. Bangladesh, Sachin Tendulkar reached his 100th international century!! Sachin has boldly gone on to where no man has ever gone before! Hail, King Sachin!! I could not locate the photograph that I spoke about earlier. Here’s one from Ben Radford / © AllSport UK Ltd, from ESPNCricinfo.

Wow! What a feat!!  Don’t think that this stupendous world record of 100 international centuries will ever be broken!!!

The nearest international cricket player to Sachin Tendulkar on the list of players with the most international tons in a career is Ricky Ponting of Australia with 71 hundreds! South African Jacques Kallis, is further down at 59 tons!! Off the other batsmen with over 40 international hundreds in cricket, only two – Sri Lankans Mahela Jayawardene with 45 tons and Kumar Sangakkara with 41 tons, respectively, make the list.

I remember Sachin came close to his maiden test hundred vs. New Zealand at Napier in Feb. 1990, and the excitement surrounding that! I first saw Sachin Tendulkar play for West Zone at a Duleep Trophy game in New Delhi’s Ferozshah Kotla ground in the early 1990s.  Since then, I too have followed his career very closely. It has been a real pleasure following you all of these years, King Sachin!!

NASSCOM announces top 10 start-ups to watch!

On the eve of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2011, to be held in Bangalore, on Nov. 9-10, 2011,  NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) announced the list of the top 10 start-ups to watch. These top 10 start-ups are:

1. Pawaa Software — Pawaa
2. QuickoLabs — SearchEnabler
3. Persistent Systems Ltd — eMee
4. Imaginate — Imaginate
5. Srijan Technologies Pvt Ltd — DROWPS
6. Conwerge Web Services Pvt Ltd – Grupur.com
7. Semgel Technologies Pvt Ltd — Semgel
8. Openweb Labs Pvt Ltd – HirePlug, Getlive.me
9. Ozonetel Systems Pvt Ltd — KooKoo
10.  NRich Software Pvt Ltd — DiaSof.

Indian semicon market update shows 28.3 percent growth in 2010!

I am a bit amused to read the latest key findings on the Indian semiconductor market from ISA-Frost & Sullivan. Never mind!

Source: ISA-Frost

The report concludes that products demonstrating potential for explosive growth include –mobile devices, telecom base stations, LCD TV, STB, EMS, CFL, LED lights and smart cards and products with low MI – notebooks, tablets, STBs routers, digital cameras, etc. need to be given preferential treatment for indigenous manufacturing.

India is becoming the hub for small car manufacturing. Incentives and encouragement need to be provided for enhancing automotive component manufacturing in the country to keep pace with automobile industry growth.

Products enabling energy efficiency need to be incentivized through tax breaks for R&D and product development thereby promoting indigenous manufacturing. Electronics and semiconductor MI stagnate at 50 percent;  the TAM growth is unlikely to match the TM growth in the near future! Continuing status quo — the electronics import bill to surpass crude import bill by 2020-21.

The need of the hour is a focused mission for local electronics manufacturing promotion. A National Electronics Development Plan is also required. As is required an electronics policy for ecosystem development; subsidies for manufacturing; funds for R&D; extended tax breaks; hardware development parks.

Otherwise, the report suggests that India’s semiconductor market grew by a phenomenal 28.3 percent in 2010.

Indian semicon market: Source: ISA-Frost

The global semiconductor market’s cyclical trends has minimal impact on India. Mobile devices, telecom and IT/ OA contributed 82 percent to semiconductor TM in 2010.

Local manufacturing of telecom equipment by OEMs and EMS companies to propel related semiconductor consumption by a massive 50 percent during 2010 to 2012. Influenced by regulatory norms and sharpening competition, automotive segment to account for the highest growth in semiconductor demand at 31 percent from 2010 to 2012.

Sustained gulf between the semiconductor TM and TAM from 2010-2012 highlight the urgency to promote local manufacturing to drive higher growth in TAM.

The Total Semiconductor Market (TM) revenues are poised to grow from $6.55 billion in 2010to $9.86 billion in 2012. The market is expected to witness a CAGR of 22.7 percent.

During the corresponding period, the Total Semiconductor Available Market (TAM) revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.3 percent reaching revenues of $4.71 billion in 2012from $3.14 billion in 2010. Mobile devices and telecom are the key contributors to TAM while mobile devices and IT/ OA are the key contributors to TM.

Being an indispensable component in a wide range of products, the memory market leads the contribution to semiconductor revenues with 23.4 percent and 20.1 percent of TM and TAM, respectively.

One hopes that all of this is indeed correct, and the Indian semiconductor industry continues to grow in future!

Citrix roundtable on balanced globalization

Citrix held a roundtable titled: Balanced Globalization, in Bangalore. The participants were:

Martin Duursma, VP, Citrix Labs and CTO Office Chair, Citrix Labs. He has been with Citrix for over a decade.

Gordon Payne, senior VP and GM, Desktop Division Desktop Division. He has been with Citrix since 2004 and and helped ramp Citrix to a number one position in Secure Remote Access. Since then he has held a number of senior general management roles across multiple Citrix products and business units.

Klaus Oestermannm, VP and GM, Networking & Cloud. Oestermann has been with Citrix for seven years and held various other positions within the company, including sales director for the Nordic Region of Europe, senior director of worldwide channel strategies and development, and senior director of enterprise and ISV partners. Oestermann has more than 20 years’ experience in the IT industry.

Study on semiconductor design, embedded software and services industry in India

The India Semiconductor Association (ISA) has released a study on semiconductor design, embedded software and services industry, along with Ernst & Young.

According to the report, the key challenges constraining the growth of the semiconductor design industry are summarized under five major issues:
i) Quality, availability and maturity of talent.
ii) Absence of a startup and SME ecosystem.
iii) Lack of a semiconductor ecosystem.
iv) Lack of adequate infrastructure, policies and implementable incentives.
v) External issues such as competition from Asian countries and protectionist policies by some countries.

The report then goes on to tackle each one of these issues in detail under elaborate recommendations.

These recommendations require the concerted and co-ordinated efforts by the government, industry and academia to aid India reach the next level of growth and achieve the specific goals envisaged for the industry. The goals are:

Goal 1: Maintain leadership in semiconductor design by incubating 50 fabless semiconductor companies, each with the potential to grow to $200 million in annual revenues by 2020.

Goal 2: Build on India’s favorable intellectual property protection image and make it among the top 5 destinations for intellectual property creation in the semiconductor design industry.

Goal 3: Capitalize on indigenous demand in strategic sectors to provide impetus to the Indian fabless semiconductor industry.

Goal 4: Sustain and nurture high-class semiconductor design manpower at a growth rate of 20 percent year-on-year to double its current output levels to reach a workforce size of 400,000 in the next five years.

The very first goal itself is a bit far fetched, but not that it can’t be achieved. To reach anywhere close to this goal, a concerted all round effort would be required from all in the industry. The fourth goal would have been better as the first goal, but never mind.

The second goal looks fine, but it is the third goal that seems a bit far off. This is April 2011, and still, there are talks about capitalizing on the indigenous demand in strategic sectors in order to provide impetus to the Indian fabless semiconductor industry?

I recall a discussion in mid-2005 where an industry expert mentioned that fabless was the way forward for the Indian industry! Between then and now, fabs were supposed to come up, but they failed. Nevertheless, one must not give up hope!

India is World Cup Cricket champion! Yaayyy!!

India has won the World Cup Cricket championship for 2011! Yaayyy!!

It was just brilliant! When Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni clouted that second ball of the 49th over from Nuwan Kulasekara over long on for a huge six, the World Cup of cricket was finally ours! After 28 years!! Wow, take that!!!

India win the World Cup of Cricket, 2011!

Chasing a ‘huge’ score of 275 runs at the start of the Indian innings, the first blow came off the very second ball, when Virender Sehwag was adjudged LBW to a sharp in-cutter from Lasith Malinga. That grand old man of Indian cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, kept playing some great shots, till the first ball of the 6th over, when his poke was well held by a diving Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan keeper-cum-captain. The sight of Malinga celebrating that wicket stands out in memory! The reason: Sri Lanka never got a second chance thereafter!

So good were Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni, that India never lost track of the target, post that dismissal! In between, Virat Kohli, the young turk, played a nice cameo, and later, Yuvraj Singh (who is six days younger to me ) played really special knocks, that took India to a very historic win, after 28 long years!

Never before has a team won a World Cup final chasing a target of 275 runs. Australia scored 274, before being all out in the 1975 final to the West Indies, chasing 291 runs. Never before has a team, with a centurion – Mahela Jayawardene – lost in a final! Never has a host nation won the World Cup playing at home, although Sri Lanka, a co-host, won in 1996 vs. Australia, at Lahore. The last time India won the World Cup, in 1983 vs. West Indies, no player scored a century. This time, again, no Indian player scored a century!

There should be many other firsts. However, I am too overwhelmed to even mention them! For now, let’s all savour the famous win crafted by India over Sri Lanka at the new-look Wankhede Stadium!

For me, personally, I have been privileged to view both the triumphs — the 1983 win at Lords against West Indies as a young boy, and now this, in 2011! Which one was better? Perhaps, 1983! Why? Simply because the conditions were really challenging, and India had to face a much, much deadlier bowling attack as well as a lethal batting line-up!

For now, let us all celebrate India’s second World Cup triumph over Sri Lanka at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium! I simply can’t sleep tonight for sure!!

ST focuses on four key growth areas

Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO, STMicroelectronics.

According to Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO of STMicroelectronics, there are four key growth areas for the company:
* Smart meters and energy saving.
* Smart consumer devices.
* Trust and data security.
* Healthcare and well being.

Bozotti was speaking at the STMicroelectronics’ media roundtable held this evening at the Greater Noida, India office.

Year 2010 goes down in ST’s history as a year of records. Both ACCI and IMS surpassed the $1 billion mark in quarterly revenue. Year 2010 was also a year of recovery — with ST achieving $1,3 billion revenue and a net operational cashflow of $961 million. ST also improved its net financial position to $1.7 billion.

In 2011, ST promises to expand and continue to grow its customer base. This year, ST predicts that the global semicon industry will grow 5-8 percent.

ST forsees its second major block of growth in manufacturing. It has aggressive ramp-up planned in application areas, such as:
* MEMS.
* Smart power automotive field.
* New platforms and solutions in smartphones and tablets.

Even ST-Ericsson, which was in restructuring mode, is now secure. This year, said Bozotti, it will be a year of transition from old, legacy products to new.

The last priority is to achieve 3D SoCs, complex MCUs and twin MEMS. Bozotti noted that the company plans to combine accelerometer and gyroscope in a single application. It will also add innovative solutions to smartphones and tablets.

As for R&D, Bozotti claimed that the company will remain committed. “We strongly commit to R&D in both good and bad times,” he noted.

Round-up 2010: Best of semiconductors

Right then, folks! This is my last post for 2010, on my favorite topic – semiconductors. If 2009 was one of the worst, if not, the worst year ever for semiconductors, 2010 seems to be the best year for this industry, what with the analyst community forecasting that the global semicon industry will surpass the $300 billion mark for the first time in its history!

Well, here’s a look at the good, the bad and the ugly, if available for otherwise what has been an excellent year, which is in its last hours, for semiconductors. Presenting a list of posts on semiconductors that mattered in 2010.

Top semiconductor and EDA trends to watch out for in 2010!

Delivering 10X design improvements: Dr. Walden C. Rhines, Mentor Graphics @ VLSID 2010

Future research directions in EDA: Dr. Prith Banerjee @ VLSID 2010 — This was quite an entertaining presentation!

Global semicon industry on rapid recovery curve: Dr. Wally Rhines

Indian semicon industry: Time for paradigm shift! — When will that shift actually happen?

Qualcomm, AMD head top 25 fabless IC suppliers for 2009; Taiwan firms finish strong!

TSMC leads 2009 foundry rankings; GlobalFoundries top challenger!

ISA Vision Summit 2010: Saankhya Labs, Cosmic Circuits are Indian start-ups to watch at Technovation 2010!

ISA Vision Summit 2010: Karnataka Semicon Policy 2010 unveiled; great opportunity for India to show we mean business! — So far, the Karnataka semicon policy has flattered to deceive! I’m not surprised, though!

Dongbu HiTek comes India calling! Raises hopes for foundry services!!

Indian electronics and semiconductor industries: Time to answer tough questions and find solutions — Reminds me of the popular song from U2 titled — “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”!

What should the Indian semicon/electronics industry do now? — Seriously, easy to say, difficult to manage (ESDM)!