Friday, Nov 19, 2004
Intel evaluating India as manufacturing destination
Our Bureau
[Dr Craig Barrett, CEO, Intel Corporation, with a young learner from Kerala during the launch of the Intel Learn Programme in the Capital on Thursday. - Ramesh Sharma]
New Delhi , Nov. 18
GLOBAL semiconductor major Intel Corporation's CEO, Dr Craig R. Barrett, on Thursday said the company was evaluating India as a possible location for manufacturing.
"The question is whether we will put up a manufacturing plant in India. ... I will not say no to that. India is one of the several countries that we are currently evaluating from a manufacturing perspective. We are not ready to announce a location for our next manufacturing plant at this time. India is one of the several competitors," Dr Barrett told reporters here.
Dr Barrett, who is currently on the first leg of his India visit, further said the company's choice of China as its current manufacturing location was driven by favourable factors such as manufacturing infrastructure, transport infrastructure and ease of movement of products.
"There are probably 100 countries across the world that will like to have our manufacturing plant built in their country. But they need to recognise the competitive environment, and if you then start to look at issues of transportation, customs, utilities, government rules and regulations, you realise the amount of competition," he said but declined to comment on whether Intel felt a need for improvement of infrastructure in India.
Dr Barrett remained tight-lipped about the other countries that the company was currently evaluating as a possible destination for its manufacturing plant. "It ranges from Asian locations to Eastern European locations to Latin American location, so that is broad enough," was all he would say.
On expansion plans for its Bangalore development centre, Dr Barrett said, "We have a target but we will not divulge it. We have 2,400 employees here in India and we are substantially increasing our staff here. We will continue to focus on engineering hardware development, software development and will continue to grow our development centre in Bangalore."
Comparing the capabilities of China and India, Dr Barrett said he had seen both the countries improve their infrastructure substantially. "The comparison to China is in some instances similar and in some instances different. China has a goal to have manufacturing expertise in the hi-tech area. India's goal is much more towards software and engineering skills. ... I see both countries using education expertise in similar fashion but in different aspects of engineering and manufacturing," he said.
On the company's financial performance, Dr Barrett said, "We are on track to improve the performance which we were not meeting earlier as per our old standard. We are still on target to introduce the next generation process technology, 65 Nanometer, in the second half of next year. With this, Intel will be the first major corporate to have production in that technology."
"We already have two microprocessors designed on that technology. It is a process that is being debugged and getting ready for manufacturing next year," he said.
Intel has rebounded from a low period of sales and revenue last year, and in the first half of 2004, it posted a revenue of $16.14 billion. "I am looking for improved performances in 2005 over what it was in the first half of 2004," Dr Barrett said.
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