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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

May - 2006 - issue > Company Profile

Sense and Simplicity at Philips

Mohammed Shariff
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Mohammed Shariff
Engineers at Philips Semiconductors, operating as part of the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore are ecstatic reading the good reports that are being written about the Dell High Definition TV that doubles up as a computer monitor when need be. They should be. After all 22 of these engineers were amongst those that wrote the codes for the chip that makes the conversion from a TV to a PC monitor and vice versa a possibility. “Am proud that our team worked on this challenging assignment and achieved excellent results in a short turn around time,” says Paramesh Babu, who led the Dell team.

Overlooking the majestic Ulsoor Lake, all engineers in the expansive campus are as innovative as the team that worked on the Dell project. “That’s the passion we have for innovation,” Rajeev Mehtani, Vice President and Site Innovation Manager, Philips Semiconductors says.

Commencing Bangalore operations in 1996, the company has built expertise in embedded systems, architecture design, programming and testing for home and mobile applications in the decade they have been here. Philips Innovation Campus has 1600 employees and 77 patents to its credit. That is visible in its technology that goes into high-end mobile phones made by Samsung, the digital TVs made by parent company Philips and Dell amongst others.

The parent organization, showing faith in the Bangalore center, has mandated it to take on a bigger role in the company’s overall R&D activities that means more work and more innovation. The result will be seen in the future releases of digital televisions, DVD players and set-top boxes in which Philips has the advantage over their rivals. As electronic products become more advanced and feature rich, one aspect that makes them worthy is the software that is increasingly being embedded in chips that power them. Working in Bangalore offers Philips ready access to top quality engineers. It puts Philips close to the untapped potential market in India that is ready to splurge on newer technologies. This means their engineers can develop for the local markets as well apart from working for the international customers.

Asia is in the cusp of a new digital revolution and the nouveau riche, flush with money are splurging on electronic devices. Most of these devices have an India connection. Take an MP3 player for instance. They are not merely store-play-delete devices. Today they have an inbuilt voice recorder; FM radio and can act as a storage device. Though not manufactured here, the codes that were written right here in India were embedded in the chips that go into making multiusabilty possible. A proof of the ingenuity of Indian programmers.


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