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STMicro to hire 400 in India

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI: Europe's largest chipmaker, STMicroelectronics, plans a 36 percent increase in staff at its Indian R&D unit to enable the design team to contribute more to the firm's global operations, an official said.

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STMicro, also the world's fourth largest chipmaker, set up a chip design centre in India in 1990, to tap the nation's large pool of skilled engineers willing to work at wages that are a fraction of their overseas counterparts.

"Employee strength will cross 1,500 people towards the end of 2003 or by the first quarter," Vivek Sharma, director at STMicro's Indian chip research and development unit, told Reuters.

The centre, situated on the outskirts of New Delhi, currently has 1,100 engineers on its rolls who work on chip designs, embedded software and also provide software services backup for STMicro's global clients.

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The Franco-Italian firm's products are found in a wide range of consumer goods including mobile phones, DVD players, set-top boxes, disk drives and automobiles.

Apart from STMicro, global technology firms such as Intel Corp, Texas Instruments Inc and Motorola Inc have chip design units in India where the fast-growing software sector provides low cost outsourcing services.

Sharma said STMicro had invested more than $120 million in India and its expenses on this centre were expected to touch $30 million this year.

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He said the centre's emphasis would be on honing its expertise in designing solutions to spur new applications for the global telecoms, multi-media and digital consumer markets.

The telecoms team was being ramped up because top customers such as handset makers Nokia and Alcatel were increasingly looking at buying total solutions from STMicro, he said.

"This team already has 30 people and that will be ramped up to 100 by the end of the year," Sharma said.

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"If we keep up our recruitment pace, then India can become one of the largest design centres for STMicroelectronics globally."

STMicro, which competes with Texas Instruments Inc, has 39 design centres and 17 production sites across the world.

© Reuters

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