According to S&P, a reputed rating agency, India should be the Asia-Pacific region’s bright spot and forecasts that India’s economic growth will rise to 7.9 per cent in FY 2016, and will further rise to 8.2 per cent in FY 2017. Indian GDP has dramatically increased to 6.9 per cent from 5 per cent in FY2014, and 7.4 per cent for this fiscal year. Especially now, when the country is witnessing temporary slowdowns,these figures are quite encouraging.
Contribution of ESDM Industry to Indian Economy
The Electronics Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector ranks high among the various segments contributing to creating this progress. Though it may not have matched the optimistic growth previously forecasted by experts, the industry in India has continued to chart an upward trend and its performance in the last few years is a strong achievement.
Positive Outlook for ESDM India
The rollout of new and evolving policies by the Government of India, like recognition of the ESDM industry as a key contributor to the Indian GDP, and national policies on telecom and electronics, is a major step forward. Additionally, with the increasing demand forelectronics , the demand in the Indian market is estimated to be USD 100 Billion in 2014-15 and is expected to reach USD 400 Billion by 2020)(according to Government of India Task Force report (DeitY)), forecasters expect the ESDM Industry to spur into a higher growth mode. Clearly it’s time for the ESDM industry to leapfrog into new technologies and solutions that can make a positive contribution to people’s lives – safer, easier, healthier, richer, fuller, and more playful. As a top semiconductor supplier in the world, with a well-established presence in India, STMicroelectronics is ideally positioned (with the essential depth and breadth of operations) to make significant contributions to develop Indian electronics ecosystem along with its partners.
Opportunities to accelerate growth
Here are some potential sectors in India where the ESDM Industry can positively contribute and how ST and its Life.Augmented brand philosophy can bring benefits to various stakeholders.
Smart Power
In India, as in other developing economies, energy efficiency enhancement technologies such as smart grids can accelerate development by harnessing less capital-intensive distributed energy resources, which nature has so generously bestowed. India’s government had recently unveiled its Smart Grid Vision and Road Map for both modernizing the ageing grids as well as for transition towards low carbon power economy by integrating renewable generation with the grid. In its ‘Smart Grid Vision and Road Map for India’, the ministry proposes to supply power to all households by 2017 through smart grid technologies under the National Smart Grid Mission. The market size of the envisioned smart grid projects is $30-40 billion in the next 15-20 years, at current prices.Within the overall smart grid concept, which is based on a distributed network of energy production and consumption, ST has identified four main areas where semiconductor technology will play a critical role: (a) smart metering, (b) building automation, (c) PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles), and (d) renewable energy sources. All of these are functionally linked by high-tech subsystems, including power conversion modules, communication protocols, and energy-storage systems. ST has products, technology, and solutions in place to support each of these pillars.
Smart Lighting
A significant chunk of electricity in Indian is used for lighting streets and public spaces in the cities, towns, and villages. Making public lighting more efficient is an essential contributor to a more sustainable future. ST’s long-term partnerships with the major lighting suppliers, combined with our leadership in discrete and integrated power devices, enable us to offer high-efficiency, low-cost, small solutions for all lighting applications. These include industrial, residential, commercial, architectural, and street lighting.
Internet of Things
The latest entrant to the digital space is the Internet of Things (IoT). With the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of connected nodes is growing into the billions, working with intelligent systems involving in-numerous applications driving new consumer and business behaviours. The demand for increasingly intelligent industry solutions based on the IoT is building trillions of dollars in new opportunity for ESDM industry and even more for the companies supporting the IoT.A top initiative is the Digital India Program of the Government that aims at “transforming India into [a] digital empowered society and knowledge economy”.’This effort should provide the required impetus for development of the IoT industry ecosystem in the country.With world-class capabilities in all key IoT technologies – sensing, control, smart power, and communications – and an unrivalled track record in both security and in working with ecosystem partners, the explosive developmentof the IoT is well aligned to ST’s vision of microelectronics making a positive contribution to “life.augmented.”
ST offers the simplest, fastest and most robust way into the IoT.
• Its unique product portfolio covers all key IoT functions (intelligence, security , sensing, power, and communications) AND
• The ST design ecosystem, including open platforms and simple jump-start licensing, makes it easy for customers to rapidly evaluate, prototype and commercialize innovative new IoT applications.
Smart Mobility
According to the Ministry of Transport and Highways, there is more than one death and four injuries on India’s roadways reported every minute, which makes India the country with highest number of road fatalities in the world. More importantly, the ministry’s assessment places most blame on drivers. Here, advancements in auto electronics can play a critical role.
Electronics have continuously improved automobile design.Today, the average new car contains in the range of about US$312 semiconductor content and high-end cars can contain about $1200 of semiconductors per car, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm—and the share is growing. The strong growth in automotive applications is driven by both continued growth in vehicle production and by the ability of electronic products and technologies to improve every aspect of the car, including reliability, safety, performance, environmental impact, and driver/passenger comfort and convenience. In addition, the emergence of hybrid or electric vehicles will further increase the role of electronics in future vehicle platforms.
ST’s automotive-solutions portfolio covers all key application areas in the car: Safety, Powertrain, Car Body, and Infotainment.For more than 30 years, ST has been a leader in automotive semiconductors and the Company is fully committed to using its unrivalled combination of technologies, product design skills, high-quality manufacturing resources, and partnerships with key players in the automotive ecosystem to make cars themselves greener, safer, more economical, and more enjoyable to use and also to help further integrate the automobiles we need into a sustainable world.
Smart Health & Wellness
Thanks to the ever-increasing pervasion of microelectronics technology, the traditional medical electronics market transforming into the broader and faster-growing health and wellness market, in which people are taking more and more responsibility for their personal health and fitness.
Semiconductor technology is enabling this revolution on two broad fronts. The first is the ongoing improvement in traditional “medical equipment,” ranging from, for instance, fairly low-tech motorized hospital beds to the most sophisticated medical imaging equipment. Like all industrial applications, these benefit from the universal “win-win-win-win” effect of semiconductor technology where each new technology generation improves the Price, Performance, Power consumption and Physical size of the end equipment.Moreover, because of outstanding medical specialists and reasonable costs, India is a favorite destination for “healthcare tourism.” The second front enabled by semiconductor technology is the dramatic evolution from the traditional hospital-based approach to a 21st-century cloud-based system. In this new approach, hospitals, clinics, and medical experts will continue to provide the state-of-the-art diagnostic and surgical expertise while individuals and their local healthcare professionals take on more responsibility for the day-to-day management of personal health and wellbeing, using a proliferation of “consumer” health and wellness products.Given India’s size and geography, remote healthcare is a potential powerful tool that expands medical access via both short distance (monitoring-device-to-recording device) and longer distance (device-to-hospital) communication.
ST is leading the Health and Wellness revolution at every level: as a manufacturing partner for some of the world’s most innovative and important healthcare-equipment manufacturers; as an expert and flexible development partner for companies with new ideas; as a broad-range supplier able to offer complete hardware and software solutions for the fastest proof-of-concept, prototyping, industrialization and commercialization scenarios; and as a major technology innovator in fields as diverse as microfluidics, ultra-low power design and motion sensing.
Many of the new wave of “consumer” health and wellness products are based on a set of key microelectronic building blocks, such as motion sensors, low-power microcontrollers and wireless transceivers, and ST is unique in that it is a world leader in all of these areas.
Wearables
IDC forecasts the Wearables Market will grow to be a $48B market by 2019 and is also a major opportunity to augment India, by empowering individuals to be more creative and productive and addressing global societal challenges such as the world’s ageing population.The sector itself may be in its infancy in India, but Indians are showing keen interest in buying fitness monitors, smart watches, and Internet-enabled eyeglasses. According to reports, the wearable health devices market in India is pegged at Rs.25 crore in 2014, and should touch one million units in 2015 in India compared with the US, which stands at $1 billion touching eight million units in 2014.
With a product portfolio that spans the full range of Motion MEMS & Environmental Sensors, ultra-low-power connectivity ICs, analog and mixed-signal components, and smart energy-management products for the wearables market, along with an industry-leading family of STM32 ARM® Cortex®-M microcontrollers and an outstanding choice of development tools, ST is well positioned to continue its success in the wearables market.
The Outlook
The above opportunities are all at different stages of maturity, but the environment is right to move ahead. Indian’s ESDM industry needs to ramp up its capabilities to deliver quality and choose the path of innovation to grow and compete in global markets. ST sees these markets as important opportunities to put technology to increased use to help solve important societal challenges across the country as well as the globe. With world-class capabilities in all key technologies — sensing, control, smart power, and communications, and an unrivalled track record in working with ecosystem partners, the opportunities are aligned with ST’s vision of microelectronics making a positive contribution to “life.augmented.” We are committed to working with our partners and exploring every opportunity to play a key role in enabling this next wave electronics development in the country.
About Author
Vivek Sharma, Regional Vice President, Greater China and South Asia Region – India Operations, Director India Design Centers, STMicroelectronics
