Chip industry's next downturn in 2006

BANGALORE: "The semi conductor industry is on an upturn now, but it is not going to last long. I expect the industry to experience its next downturn in 2006. These are good times and during these times we have to plan for the bad times to come," said senior advisor to Toshiba Corporation and board member of Future Techno Designs Tsuyoshi Kawanishi. He was speaking at a press conference in Bangalore to discuss the semi conductor industry in Asia and its future.

"China and India have been spoken of as competitors and menaces to the Japanese semi-conductor industry. I would disagree. Both countries have the potential to become important partners as well as great markets for Japan," he said. He pointed out that foundry penetration has been increasing in China for the last few years and exports from Japan to the country had increased almost three fold in recent times to support his argument. Moreover, Integrated Device Manufactures (IDM) are becoming important customers of foundries and by 2006 will compose close to 50 percent of their customer base.

He emphasized that prospects for partnership between the three countries are huge. He pointed out that India can especially capitalize on platform based design methods where chips are programmed with software as the last step and develop a niche for itself in design and IP creation.

Adding to the same, CEO of Future Techno Designs Group, Singapore Bala said, "India has lost its opportunity in the semi conductor space. It does not have the manufacturing capability and lacks in back end support. But in the future it can become a big player in the System-On-A-Chip (SoC) area."

Future Techno Designs Group is a Singapore based company operating three companies - Future Techno Designs, Socrates Software India and Avedis Microsystems - in India all of which work on facets of the semi conductor industry.

(CyberMedia News Service)