The Hindu Business Line : NXP Semiconductors sees more opportunities here

Bangalore May 18 NXP stands for Next Experience, and that is just what the company is bringing to India. The € 5-billion chip design firm is viewing the country as a hot market and not just a development hub.

"Compared to other countries, India has a relatively high adoption rate of new technologies such as IPTV, which is an interactive two-way stream of video, audio and data to your homes, and RFID (radio frequency identification, a short range data retrieval and transfer method)," said Mr Frans van Houten, President and Chief Executive Officer, NXP Semiconductors.

The company makes set-top boxes for IPTV delivery. This also has another application in remote medical imaging.

India as a market is growing at 40 per cent, higher than most others.

M-money usage in the country is expected to begin soon with NXP working with others in the industry to bring contact-less payment to the society. RFID chips embedded in the mobile with an extra antenna will allow users to pay up at the point-of-sale terminal with just a mobile. "This will save time in rural areas, as there will be no need to go to the bank to withdraw money," said Mr Ashok Chandak, Director, NXP Semiconductor India. He said that the financial inclusion directive issued by the Government would be integrated in the m-money and smart card projects.

Working on e-passports

E-passports are on the anvil. "The Government is seriously looking at e-passports. Standardisation is in progress. Pilots will take place in Q1 of next year. Passports will be issued first to diplomats and later to the general public," said Mr Chandak.

He said 85 per cent of countries use passports that use NXP's chips. India has 40 million passports and about 10 million are being added every year. He said the Government would have to make the decision on when the e-passports will be rolled out.

Other applications of RFID are also being chased — transport, animal tagging, authentication of government documents and in supply chain. The company's recent smart card project for Delhi Metro is being used by a million people, said Mr van Houten.

NXP's chips will power Reliance's sub-$20 CDMA handsets. A low-cost single chip mobile phone running on NXP's PNX4901 GSM chip is expected to be released shortly in India through a "major" operator.

Regarding manufacturing, Mr van Houten confirmed that NXP would not set up any new manufacturing sites.

EXPANSION PLANS

NXP currently partners with six companies for research and 50 for co-developing solutions. Mr van Houten said that the firm was looking at acquisition of one of the partners in India.

At the Bangalore development centre, work is being done in mobile protocol stacks (software that runs your mobile), wireless local area network (WLAN) and GPRS (mobile Internet), digital TV, car radios, near field communication (RFID), wireless technologies such as ZigBee and so on.

Research on futuristic technologies such as semiconductors in personal healthcare products and solid state lighting is also being carried out. The centre currently employs 815 and will ramp up to 900 by the end of this year, said Mr van Houten. There were 19 patents filed from India in the last year.

NXP moved its sales team from Mumbai to the Bangalore centre in a move that bespoke the company's interest in India as a market.