Qualcomm says India is a major chip design market as PM Modi pushes forward with chips

The American chip giant designs semiconductor and wireless communications products. Qualcomm is best known for his Snapdragon processors, which power some of the top Android smartphones around the world.

Like other chip designers, Qualcomm doesn’t manufacture its own chips. Instead, it relies on chipmakers like TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and GlobalFoundries.

“India now has more engineers than anywhere else in the world,” Soin said. “We have a lot of engineers here who do end-to-end chip design.”

The Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report that the chip design process is “extremely complex,” requiring “years of research and development, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and thousands of engineers.”

An integral part of the semiconductor manufacturing process, chip design defines the chip’s architecture and system requirements, as well as how the individual circuits are laid out on the chip.

Local media reported in January that Qualcomm was expanding its Chennai operations with a new design center focused on wireless technology.

The Rs 1.77 billion ($21.3 million) investment will also support Qualcomm’s commitment to the Government of India’s visions of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Design in India’.

“Twenty years ago, we saw India as a great center of research and development and a great talent pool. We see India as a great market. [a] It’s a great opportunity,” Soin told CNBC’s Shri Jegaraja.

“We are currently in talks with a number of semiconductor back-end and manufacturing businesses that India is looking to set up. Our CEO said two years ago that if India is going to set up semiconductor manufacturing, we are going to have to make sure that we can actually get it into mass production. “I promised to cooperate with you,” Soin said.

India’s semiconductor ambitions have taken a major step forward with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government approving three semiconductor factories in Gujarat and Assam, with an investment of more than $15 billion.

According to a February 29 government statement, “India already has deep capabilities in chip design. With these units, our country will develop chip manufacturing capabilities. Advanced packaging technology will be unique in India. “It will be developed in the future.”

India wants to become a major chip hub to compete with the United States, Taiwan and South Korea, and is encouraging foreign chipmakers to set up operations in the country. As the world’s semiconductor manufacturers seek to diversify their operations amid geopolitical uncertainty, countries like India stand to benefit.

To boost domestic manufacturing capacity and exports, India has committed billions of dollars worth of investment to “attract investment” in key sectors and cutting-edge technologies, making India an “integral part of global value chains”. Announced production-linked incentives.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics, Information Technology, Railways and Telecommunications, told CNBC in March that India aims to become one of the world’s top five semiconductor manufacturers in the next five years.

“What we have seen is that, for example, with the benefit of PLI, we are definitely bringing more and more smartphone manufacturing to India,” Soin said.

“So we’ve seen good incentives for IT, telecommunications and telecom equipment that’s being manufactured here. We’re seeing some discussion around design elements. So we’re seeing more, We hope that some elements of the product using our technology will be appreciated, “Designed in India,” Soin said.

Apple is one of the companies that has diversified some of its manufacturing operations into India amid geopolitical tensions between the US and China. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple currently assembles about 14% of its iPhones in India, double the amount it produced locally last year.

Nikkei Asia reported in February that Google plans to start producing Pixel smartphones in India by the second quarter.