Intel to build First Asia Fab in China

Link: Intel's First Asia Fab Goes To China, Not India.

Intel has announced its plans to build its first semiconductor fabrication plant ($2.5 billion) in Asia in Dalian, China. Intel will be investing $4 billion overall in China and will be closer to the Asia Pacific market, which make up 50% of its net revenue, and customers in China such as Lenovo Group and Dell.

It's interesting to see the Indian perspective, as it pursues a fabrication industry to add to its already successful chip designing industry to complete a full semiconductor ecosystem. The Indian government has explored and announced incentives on semiconductor policy to attract fabs to be built and running by 2010. Unfortunately, Intel was one of those they were targeting.

On top of Intel's announcement there is already a growing semiconductor fab business in China as well as a great deal of design and backend work going on. However, my contacts in region are constantly screaming out for local semiconductor engineering talent. This is not just in China but also includes Singapore and Malaysia which both have growing semiconductor industries. How they deal with the growing wage pressure and fight for talent will be an interesting one.

Comments

[Raseel Bhagat]

Its really interesting that Intel is not showing a keen interest in India's upcoming Semicon industry.
And EVEN more interesting is that AMD is not responding to Intel's interest in China by showing interest in India.

[Steven Kempton]

Raseel, I don't think it's about China vs. India for AMD and Intel, I doubt the idea that the two countries are competing even enters their mind when making a decision like this.