Flextronics, a provider of contract manufacturing services to electronics industry, has decided to pick up minority stake in SemIndia's $3 billion project to set up a chip manufacturing facility in Hyderabad.
The world's second-largest computer chip maker Advanced Micro Devices is planning to invest about $500 million in SemIndia's proposed chip manufacturing facility near Hyderabad.\n\n
SemIndia, a consortium of overseas Indians, on Wednesday announced plans to invest $3 billion in an advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in the country with technology from America's Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The firm has already signed a technology transfer deal with SemIndia, which is setting up a fab plant near Hyderabad
Major investment plans for a fabrication facility have put off due to the slowdown. A full-fledged fab requires an investment of $3-4 bn. Moreover, even if a fab were to come up now in the country, the technology would be rendered obsolete by the time it starts production. "If the government was serious about making the electronics manufacturing ecosystem robust, why is it sitting on proposals? How can you sustain a company's interest for so long?" asks an industry source.
India may not have got the timing right about nurturing two or three semiconductor plants even as the government finally has a policy that it hopes could put the country on the world map of semiconductor (wafer fab) manufacturing.
LCD displays could be produced in India in the near future.
