The Hindu Business Line : ATI expanding operations in India

Strategic move
Fastest growing market for its chips for mobiles, set-top boxes, gaming devices.
Better coordination with development teams of mobile cos here.
Investment over next 4 years to touch $75 million.

Hyderabad , April 28

The $2.2-billion communications and graphics chip solutions provider, ATI Technologies Inc, has embarked on an India expansion drive that would see it shifting to a new R&D centre and setting up a Digital TV Lab and an audio/acoustics lab.

The company expects to ramp up its India investment plans from $50 million (announced last year) to over $75 million within four years, with an average investment of about $10 million a year here. Thus far, it has deployed about $15 million in the Hyderabad development centre.

The Senior Vice-President of ATI Technologies, based in Canada, Mr Adrian Hartog, said India and China in the Asia-Pacific region have emerged as two of the fastest growing markets for consumption of its chips for mobile phones, set-top boxes, gaming devices and graphics applications. "Having partnerships with some key players like Motorola, Siemens, Samsung, LG, the India centre has emerged strategic as we are closely interfacing with the development teams of mobile companies such as Motorola in India. We expect to double India headcount from 175 to about 350 to 400 this year," he said.

The Managing Director of ATI India, Mr Dasaradha R Gude, said: "We have significantly invested in the new centre and are in the process of establishing a Digital TV Lab that would focus on chips for digital and high definition entertainment segment and another Audio Lab, that would seek to provide superior audio capability in entertainment devices. The nature of work would be quite broad and potentially cover testing."

"Last year we shipped over 100 million mobile handset chips and expect to cross much ahead this year. This is in addition to over 100 million chips in other segments. The advanced 3D graphics and visualisation technology chips are in great demand in gaming applications such as X-Box 360 and Nintendo as also Game Cube," Mr Hartog said.

Referring to the ATI CEO, Mr Dave Orton's visit, and its sponsorship of the International VLSI Conference to emphasise India focus, Mr Hartog said the company had set an ambitious target of becoming a $5-billion company in couple of years.