Barrett chips in for India

Intel chief says country may get chip plant.

Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, is looking at India as a possible locations for a chip manufacturing facility, the company's Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett said today.

"India is one of the several countries that we are evaluating for setting up a manufacturing facility," Barrett said. The US-based company has a development centre in Bangalore, which develops next-generation microprocessors.

Barrett was in the Capital to sign a memorandum of understanding with the ministry of communications and information technology to work jointly to make broadband wireless technologies affordable and viable last-mile option for providing rural services.

Barrett, however, favoured China over India for investment in the manufacturing sector. "Even though both countries have substantially increased their IT infrastructure and software exports, China is proving to be a better set-up for manufacturing," Barrett said.

The Intel CEO added that China had also developed expertise in areas like manufacturing, transportation, customs, utility services and infrastructure. Intel has so far pumped in a total of $500 million in its manufacturing plant in Shanghai.

"I have seen substantial infrastructure increase in both countries. The governments in both countries are putting a lot of emphasis on infrastructure, particularly in education. Whereas India has moved much ahead in software development and engineering, China has manufacturing expertise in high-tech engineering," said Barrett.

Indicating that the trend in India was moving towards hardware, Barrett said, "Bangalore, the IT hub of India, today boasts of more hardware engineers than software personnel. There is a directional shift from back-office software development to hardware designing capability."

The company had added 800 employees this year, bringing the total strength to 2,400 employees in India. Barrett said the number would continue to grow in the future.

He also said Intel would post an improved performance in the first half of 2005 over the previous year. "The company has pulled up its socks. We are on track to improve the performance which we were not meeting earlier as per our old standard."

Intel has registered revenues of $16.14 billion in the first half of this financial year.