NOIDA – NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI) will invest over $1 billion in India, doubling its research and development efforts, the Dutch company’s CEO said on Wednesday, joining global names doubling down on a country looking to establish its presence in the industry.
“NXP is committed to double its R&D efforts here in the country in the next few years, which is far over a billion dollars,” CEO Kurt Sievers said at the Semicon India conference near New Delhi.
He said the company is in talks with the automotive sector and other industries in the country, where it has four semiconductor design centers, with about 3,000 employees.
Though chipmaking is still at a nascent stage in India, it is a crucial element of its economic strategy, with a $10 billion incentive package allocated to bolster efforts to rival global chipmaking powerhouses like Taiwan. India expects its semiconductor market to be worth $63 billion by 2026.
Major players like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) have established substantial research and design centers in the country, underscoring its rising importance in the global ecosystem that is aiming to reduce its reliance on hubs like China and Taiwan.
“India’s contribution of about 20% of chip designing talent to the industry is growing and we are preparing an 85,000-strong semiconductor workforce of technicians, engineers, and R&D experts,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the event.
In February, India gave the go-ahead to construct three semiconductor plants worth 1.26 trillion rupees ($15 billion) to firms including Tata Group and CG Power, as the country pursues its goal of becoming an electronics powerhouse.
Last year, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said that the U.S. memory chip maker’s planned $2.7 billion testing and packaging unit in Gujarat would help create about 5,000 jobs in the state.
In June last year, Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), the chipmaking equipment vendor, said it would invest $400 million over four years in a new engineering center in India.
In July, NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI) posted its worst quarterly revenue decline in four years and forecast third-quarter revenue below estimates, stoking demand concerns for automotive chips. ($1 = 83.9480 Indian rupees)
(Source: Reuters)
Mary Lee is a freelance writer and journalist based in Toronto, Canada. She holds an M.S. degree in business and economic journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York and a certificate in digital marketing from the University of Toronto.
