NXP designates India as key market and R&D hub
Friday, 18 May 2007, 19:30 IST
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Bangalore: NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, today announced its forward-looking strategy for India. "India is now the hotbed for innovation as well as for the local and emerging market space," said NXP President and Chief Executive Officer, Frans van Houten. Speaking at the inauguration of NXP's technology campus in Bangalore, he stated that as part of the company?s efforts to better address the demands of the market, the sales force has been moved from Mumbai to Bangalore. "This is consciously aimed at reducing the communication lines between the two units which are integral to tapping into the India story." He announced that the India center will now be used as a site for global product and technology development, alongside being an important market for key products such as chips in low cost phones and Identification. The dual role for India has already seen the headcount at NXP?s India operations grow from 760 in late 2006, to 815 today, with plans to increase this to 900 by the end of 2007. The Indian organization is currently host to key R&D activities in leading edge System-on-Chip design inclusive of libraries, flows & IP Blocks and also houses software activities in the main areas of NXP's focus; digital television, cellular, multimedia for cellular, connectivity, and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies. "Currently, RFID and contact-less payments are the hottest areas in the Indian market," said Houten. The India R&D center is spearheading work on New Field Communication (NFC) technology, which will power contact-less payments; once deployed, it will enable consumers to flash their cell phones (akin to swiping debit cards), enter the amount and make payments. In order to better serve markets such as India, NXP acquired Silicon Labs' Cellular business earlier this year. The SiLabs acquisition gave NXP single chip capability which can bring the total cost of the phone to affordable levels. The PNX4901 single-chip GSM/GPRS has a very high degree of integration and low power consumption, allowing handset manufacturers to deliver sub US$20 color GSM/GPRS cell phones to the rapidly growing markets found in emerging countries. "The growth of the Indian market is close to 40 percent higher than the growth elsewhere in the world, hence our moves are aimed at creating products for the market, as well as going all out to capture the market," he noted.
Source: IANS
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