Travelling On The Silicon Road

An interesting and “down to basics” take on tomorrow’s semicon industry was provided by Jean-Philippe Dauvin,  chief economist emeritus at STMicroelectronics at SAME (Sophia Antipolis forum on Microelectronics).

He cited the development of low cost products, the consumerization of the market, the intensification of rivalries due to the number of competitors, the lack of strategic innovation from the semiconductor industry and the intensification of customers’ bargaining power as the reasons behind the low expected growth rate of 4.4 percent in 2010.
 

A statement that I especially liked in his reported address is “We are in a business that addresses the end-user, but we cannot understand the customer. Our obsession is silicon but the final customer cares about the usage not the fabs”.
 

This is so true. While it is essential for the industry to work on tools, fabs, methodologies etc., in our rush to new technos, we often lose sight of the basic tenet: Nobody actually wants we do – they want what it will do for them