India may become key chip design market, Qualcomm said

India may become key chip design market, Qualcomm said is profiled by BTW Media because published evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• “We have a lot of engineers here doing end-to-end chip design,” said Qualcomm India’s president Savi Soin in an exclusive interview.
• Qualcomm, the tech firm, in January said it is expanding its Chennai operations with a new design centre.
• India wants to become a major chip hub to compete against the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea and has been wooing foreign chip makers to set up operations in the country.

The tech company Qualcomm India’s president revealed in an exclusive interview that the company is already designing chips in India to take advantage of the skilled engineers in the nation.

About Qualcomm

The multinational chip company in the United States develops wireless telecommunications and semiconductors. The Snapdragon processors that Qualcomm produces are primarily known for powering some of the best Android smartphones available worldwide.

Similar to other chip designers, Qualcomm does not produce its chips. Rather, it depends on chip producers like GlobalFoundries, Samsung Electronics, and TSMC.

Savi Soin, president of Qualcomm India, said: “We already have chips that are designed completely end to end in India and we are shipping those globally.”

“India now has more engineers than any other country in the world,” Soin remarked. “A large number of our engineers work on end-to-end chip design here.”

Chip design, a crucial step in the semiconductor manufacturing process, establishes the specifications for the chip’s architecture, system, and layout of individual circuits.

Qualcomm announced in January that it is growing its operations in Chennai and opening a new design centre dedicated to wireless technology.

India’s chip push

With the approval of three semiconductor plants in Gujarat and Assam with investments totalling over $15 billion, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has significantly advanced India’s ambitions in the semiconductor industry.

India has been courting foreign chip manufacturers to establish operations there to become a major chip hub to rival the US, Taiwan, and South Korea. As multinational chip manufacturers seek to diversify their operations in the face of geopolitical uncertainty, nations like India stand to gain.

India has unveiled production-linked incentives worth billions of dollars to increase domestic manufacturing capacity and exports. These incentives aim to draw investment in strategic sectors and advanced technology, as well as establish India as a crucial link in the global value chain.