"Semiconductor consumption to grow in India" Baskar Dhandapani, Freescale

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Freescale Semiconductor India Pvt  Ltd recently showcased an IoT Wall at EFY Expo this year, as an illustration of how the Internet of Things is being deployed today and how semicondcutor solutions are used.  IoT wall had products across five categories like wearables, smart health, smart home, smart energy and smart cities. These categories had various products under them that were displayed at the expo. However, in an Interview with Rashi Varshney, Baskar Dhandapani, Country Sales Manager, Freescale Semiconductor , told that most of these products are yet to be available in India. He further spoke about product innovation ecosystem in India and how does Freescale plan to contribute to the semiconductor ecosystem in the country. Read on...

Edited Excerpts

How is the product innovation ecosystem in India?
In recent times, the product innovation ecosystem in India has really kickstarted. Companies are investing heavily on R&D and pushing the innovation ecosystem of the country. As cost arbitrage continues falling, companies are leveraging India centers for improving their bottom line instead of acting as a low-cost centers. The local market in India is becoming more attractive to product companies in which to sell their products to Indian enterprises.

We also have R&D centres in India in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Noida. We are doing a lot of innovative work here and are trying to add value to the overall product ecosystem in the country.

What is Freescale’s roleplay in IoT?

Freescale is well positioned in providing technology solutions for IoT. In devices side, there will are MCUs and processors. We are very well positioned with MCUs, starting from smallest of memories and packages to biggest memories. We have the right range of devices which can meet the IoT’s demand of scalable, secure and power efficient devices. We have many offerings in Kinetis L Series and Kinetis extension on ARM cortex series which we are selling in mass volumes in India.

With respect to infrastructure our QorIQ parts have the broadest portfolio are actually meant for such infrastructure process. Our B9132 processer had base station on a chip and it was a huge success in supporting small cell to large cell applications. Our newest member of the QorIQQonverge platform, the B3421 SoC is was created with optimized metrocell functionality in mind which is again scalable for small to big cells.

How does Freescale plan to contribute to the semiconductor ecosystem in the country?

The semiconductor industry in India is very well poised presently. With the government, pushing for local manufacturing and increased investments in the electronics industry, the semiconductor consumption is certainly expected to grow over the next couple of years.

Growing technical competence combined with stringent IP protection environment and trend towards localisation of contents will help this segment continue to grow. There are more than 120 companies in India focused on semiconductor design for global products. This industry has witnessed a robust growth of 17.3 per cent since 2009 and today boasts of a 5.1 percent share of the global pie.

We are constantly in touch with our customers to understand the expectations and are focusing our R&D efforts to bring forth the latest innovative technologies that have the potential to make this world a smarter place.We introduce new product/technologies as part of natural progression for a technology company and are in constantly updated with the way technology/industry is moving. And this is how we believe we have a lot to contribute to the semiconductor market in India.

How Indian market is unique for Freescale? What is Freescale's approach to explore the Indian market?

India holds an imperative position for Freescale’s business. In this age of digitization, semiconductor players have a big role to play. Usage of low power MCUs, intelligent ICs and overall greener technology is on a rise in the country and opens up new opportunities. Our end-to-end portfolio of high-performance, power-efficient MCUs and digital networking processors help realize the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), reflecting our unique ability to deliver scalable, systems-focused processing and connectivity. Our large portfolio includes scalable MCU and MPU families from small ultra-low-power Kinetis MCUs to i.MX and Vybrid multimedia processors with advanced performance and feature integration and QorIQ communications processors that deliver industry-leading power and performance.

Our strategy in India is hence to meet the demands of our customers by bringing them solutions that enable them to deliver world class products. We are constantly adding innovations to our product portfolio to further strengthen our presence.

What are the major verticals that Freescale caters to?

From a Freescale perspective, both the networking and automotive industry are very important. In the auto segment, we have an extensive portfolio of products and solutions for the auto industry and are constantly upgrading and updating it according to market standards and needs. At the recently concluded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we introduced the S32V vision microprocessor – the first automotive vision system-on-chip (SoC) with the requisite reliability, safety and security measures to automate and ‘co-pilot’ a self-aware car.

On the networking front, with top position for wired and wireless markets and over 300 million communications processors shipped, Freescale is leading innovation in next generation networking infrastructure and mobile networks. With Power Architecture technology and recently announced ARM technology based devices including PowerQUICC, QorIQ processing platforms, DSPs and RF devices, our networking portfolio is unmatched in breadth.

How are you poised in terms of offerings for Digital India?

Government’s initiative for Digital India is very much aligned with our focus of IoT and embedded processing. Our devices are pretty much aligned to this concept. Saying that, Freescale is not manufacturing in India as of now.  With the investments done in the past in our manufacturing sites, we are self-sufficient with the capacity. However, we hear of projects coming up and they will surely benefit the India’s vision for Make in India which need to touch both – ‘Make for India’ and ‘Make for World’