CIOL: What are the constraints faced by Indian designer community while designing for embedded devices?

PS: Improved skills to convert market needs to products
The market’s need for new products has to be identified. Experience in software-centric embedded products should be attained by the Indian industry to better leverage future opportunities.

Dollar Depreciation
The depreciating value of the dollar versus the rupee will put more pressure on the margins of services exports companies. Small and medium companies working on low margins will be hit harder.

CIOL: Is India's high consumption of mobile devices an advantage for semicon industry? If yes, explain how semicon plays a big role?

PS: According to a recently launched ISA-F&S report, the India semiconductor market grew 15.6 percent in 2009 in contrast to the global market that shrunk by 11 percent from 2008 and telecommunication industry was the primary driver for this growth. The phenomenal penetration rate of mobile handsets, massive expansion of communication infrastructure and drive to extend IT to the grassroots of Indian society are expected to be the growth drivers at least till 2011.

Although telecom is one of the hottest industries right now, India is primarily a services market. The focus of our telecom policies has mainly been on delivery of cost-effective services.

With impending roll-out of 3G, WiMAX services, increasing broadband, PC and mobile penetration and increasing security concerns, we have reached a stage where we need to take up domestic manufacturing seriously. When it comes to electronics manufacturing, 90 percent of the value addition comes from system designing and 10 percent from actual manufacturing. India has all the right ingredients like talent, R&D cost advantage and resources to make a success story out of ESDM.

CIOL: According to you, what are the emerging areas in India and who are using embedded technology to the core?

PS: Telecommunications, Consumer Electronics, Automotive Electronics and Medical Electronics are some of the verticals that will create a lot of potential.

CIOL: What are the trends influencing the development of embedded industry?

PS: Embedded software development companies in India will have to create a strategic advantage for them in order to succeed in the industry.
* IP creation will lead to royalty-based models as well as high-end expertise in specific domains in the embedded software value chain.
* Having a local manufacturing ecosystem will also boost this industry with product development and roll-out happening from India.
* Companies which have been providing embedded design services are moving up the value chain by building reusable components and undertaking complete system development, i.e. all levels of software development.
* There will be a strong focus on increasing margins and adopting business models which are not linearly dependent on the manpower.