BANGALORE: The announcement by Dallas (U.S.)-based semiconductor leader, Texas Instruments (TI), in Delhi last week, that it had decided to open its second Indian research and development centre in Chennai, merely confirms what analysts have been anticipating for some months now: The emergence of the Tamil Nadu capital as the next big international manufacturing hub — with a strong slant on the consumer communications industry.

Speaking to The Hindu soon after holding formal discussions with the Union Communications and Information Technology Minister, Dayanidhi Maran, TI's Senior Vice-President for the world wide wireless terminals business, Gilles Delfassy, explained that the Chennai centre, the second after the company's two-decade-old operation in Bangalore, would be immediately staffed with 25 engineers — and quickly ramped up to keep pace with Indian government's stated road map leading to 500 million mobile phone subscribers by 2010. The choice of Chennai is seen to be a canny move: it will place TI very close to potential customers for its products — most importantly, the suite of processor chips under its `Locosto' initiative to create a one-chip solution for mobile handsets — particularly the entry level Global Services Mobile (GSM) type which is seen to have a huge potential in the emerging rural markets of India.

The Sriperumbudur area on the outskirts of Chennai is already home to Finnish handset maker Nokia, which began manufacturing operations there in January this year and quickly achieved a milestone. The world's largest contract manufacturing player, the Singapore-based Flextronics, has also put down roots in Chennai— after its plants in Bangalore and Pondicherry — and hopes to launch its cell phone and mobile base station lines in the last quarter of this year. Motorola, the second biggest mobile player in India (after Nokia) is busy setting up a Chennai plant primarily to manufacture its cheaper handsets in early 2007.

The Hindu reported last week that at least three Finnish component manufacturers for the mobile phone industry — Salcomp, Aspocomp and Perlos — as well as a Taiwanese player, Hon Hai Precision, have planned to work within the Nokia Telecom Export Zone in Sriperumbudur's SIPCOT Industrial Park

There is another reason why Chennai has a compelling attraction: "We want to take advantage of the world-class talent in analogue electronics that exists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras," he said.

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