Sierra Design Automation Private Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sierra Design Automation Inc., has established offices in India to support the growing adoption of its products. Sierra will be based in Bangalore. Sierra is committing resources to provide the next generation of advanced EDA solutions and real-time support to the growing design and development teams in India.

Dell expects its proposed Indian plant to begin production by end-2006 and help the world's largest personal computer maker to win share in a booming market by cutting delivery time.

"We would like to have this manufacturing facility up and running within this year," Paul-Henri Ferrand, Dell's vice president for South Asia, told reporters on Thursday.

India will be the seventh location where Dell has a plant. It has two manufacturing sites in China and one in Malaysia region in the region, where demand for computer hardware is soaring due to relatively lower penetration rates compared with western markets. (Reuters)

India, already the world's fastest growing wireless services market, is set to become a handset manufacturing and export hub as giants such as Nokia and LG churn out millions of phones to tap voracious demand.

Global handset firms are knocking on the door of Asia's third-largest economy because of its established software industry, a booming domestic market and they want another manufacturing stronghold to offset the possible risk of operating plants in China.

Nokia, which controls nearly half the $2.5 billion Indian handset market, and its suppliers are investing about $150 million in its Chennai unit, which makes a few million handsets a month and has already exported phones to south east Asian nations like Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.

Fourth-ranked LG handsets made in India to Bangladesh, the Middle East, Nepal, Africa and Sri Lanka. LG's larger rival Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has also begun producing handsets in the country.

India's domestic market, forecast to grow to $5.8 billion by 2010, is expected to consume about 55 million handsets this year, up 71 percent from 2005. Analysts expect India's user base to rise to 278 million by 2010 as the low call rates lure customers. (Reuters)

The Videocon Group will employ 25,000 people in West Bengal backed by an investment of Rs. 900 crore in three years. The Group had sought a 100-acre land near Rajarhat, the projected IT hub of the State, for setting up a manufacturing unit for Colour TVs and an IT Park.

It would manufacture LCD TVs at its Taratola plant and invest Rs. 100 crore in the unit. The Group would invest Rs. 800 crore for the IT Park and also invest over Rs. 200 crore for setting up a state-of-the-art electronics unit near Siliguri in North Bengal.

According to IDC's India quarterly PC market tracker, the Personla Computer market grew 30% to cross the 4.6 million units mark in 2005-06. The Indian PC market is growing at 25-30% a year, while Indian laptop sales, at about 0.4 million units a year, are growing at 100%.

According to the Union IT & Communications Minister, Mr. Dayanidhi Maran, FDI in IT and Telecom sector is expected to go up by more than 100% in 2006 due to procedural simplifications and rationalization measures taken by the government in the recent past.

ST Microelectronics, the world's No.5 semiconductor is betting big on India's chip designing skills. The company plans to invest 30 million in India's operations over the next two years.

$3 billion SemIndia project set to come up in AP

SemIndia, a consortium of NRIs, AMD and the government of India, has chosed Hyderabad as the location for the upcoming 1200 acres Fab City Project. This is expected to create employment opportunities for 15 lakh people.

SemIndia plans to support the semiconductor industry in the country by manufacturing advanced semiconductor chips for personal computers, cell phones, set top boxes and broadband connectivity.