Growing IC Companies To Scale

ZTE, the telecoms company, is reported by Digitimes to have received $73.8 million from China’s National IC Industry Investment fund to accelerate the development of ARM-based apps processors.

Other chip designers which are strongly adding to their design capabilities are reported to be Allwiner, Rockchip, Spreadtrum and HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip subsidiary, which are all developing ARM-based chips.

Others reported to be expanding their development of ARM-based chips are Lenovo, the PC manufacturer, and the hand-set manufacturer Xiaomi. Xiaomi is partnering with Chinese IC design house Leadcore Technology to develop the chips.

Recently returned from China, where he met 64 CEOs at various CEO gatherings, Sir Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination Technologies, noted that several of them had received government funding of $400 million.

While not expecting the UK government to follow the China government in handing out subsidies to chip designers, Yassaie points out that, historically, UK chip firms have had to rely on foreign markets for the majority of their sales and suggests there could be better linkage between big government buying organisations like the NHS and UK semiconductor companies so that UK companies would benefit from their procurement budgets.

That would be one way, he reckons, of helping UK chip companies to grow to sufficient scale. Lack of scale, says Yassaie, is the a major problem facing UK chip companies.