Tuesday, October 22, 2013: As part of our series titled ‘Global Trade Opportunities’ where we feature global brands eager to do business in India, Anurag Gaur from electronicsforu.com spoke to Daniel Liu, marketing head, Nuvoton Technology Corp. about their business strategy in India and their plans going forward. The company was established in July 2008 as an affiliate of Winbond Electronics Corp. They started 8-bit 8051 controller in 1993, 32-bit ARM7 controller in 2000 and ARM9 in 2002.
Based on their experience, Nuvoton introduced the M0 series, NuMicro in 2009 as the pioneer of Cortex M0, and gained lots of support from customers, becoming the leading provider of Cortex M0 globally.
Q. Can you share details about your organisations’ products and services?
A. Nuvoton was established by three business groups, consumer electronics business group, PC business group and foundry business group. We hold a high market share in the motherboard I/O controller segment since we inherited Winbond’s years of experience in Computer Logic ICs field. We have regularly introduced more products, like TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and Sideshow controller etc., to meet the diversified application requirements of the computer systems. The consumer ICs focus on the product design of speech ICs, multimedia ICs.
The consumer electronics business unit develops MCU (Micro Controller Unit) and voice IC, which are widely used in industrial controller, toys IC and consumer electronic market. Meanwhile, Nuvoton’s ARM7 & ARM 9 are now popular security and communication applications. The newly introduced ARM Cortex M0 NuMicro series have been adopted by top tier tablet PC manufacturers worldwide, owing to its performance in touch screen control.
Nuvoton Foundry FAB has a capacity of 45,000 wafers per month. It offers a variety of technologies including Generic Logic, Mixed Signal (Mixed Mode), High Voltage, Ultra High Voltage, Power Management, Mask ROM (Flat Cell), embedded Logic Non-Volatile Memory processes, etc. based on 0.35 um to 0.6 um technologies. As a semiconductor manufacturing foundry, our goal is to deliver excellent foundry capabilities as a manufacturing partner to fabless or fab-lite semiconductor companies. Our annual turnover has been USD250 millions.
Q. What are your views about India as a market for your products (or services)?
A. After 2 years of consistent efforts by Nuvoton and its distributors, Nuvoton’s 8bit MCU 8051 is now well known in the Indian market. They are mainly used in electronic weighing, industrial control box. Our recently introduced ARM Cortex M0 NuMicro Family is Nuvoton’s brand-new 32-bit Microcontroller product line based on the ARM Cortex M0 processor. They meet Indian manufacturers’ requirements and help them cut down cost, shorten development process and speed up the time to market.
Q. Out of the range of products and services that you deal in, what are the kind of products that you feel will find more takers in India?
A. Nuvoton is working towards enhancing sales opportunities in emerging markets like India where hardware manufacturing is promoted. These markets are capable of designing and producing hardware, with the support of their government. We plan to introduce 8051 and ARM Cortex M0 NuMicro Family in these emerging markets.
Q. What is your business strategy with respect to the Indian market?
A. Our aim is to enhance distributors’ know how and professional technical skill. With the help of technical support from our distributors combined with our power-packed, cost effective MCU, and end-to-end solutions, we believe that customers will be open to adopting Nuvoton’s products in a short period. We will help them develop their own products much before their competitors.
Our second area of focus is to market our brand through the right use of media. We look forward to strengthen our media relations in India and run advertisements in local media to let our prospective customers know about us.
Our third focus is to host workshops or seminars for colleges, research institutions and industries to bring the latest technical acknowledgements to the Indian market.
Q. Do you have any presence in India through your own office or partners?
A. We have three distributors in India. They are Delhi-based Ramakrishna Electro Components Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru-based Nu Horizons Electronics Asia Pte Ltd and Spectra Innovations India Pvt Ltd. Spectra has branches in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad.
For those who want to get in touch with us directly, I am the point of contact. I am based out of Taipei, Taiwan.
Q. Are you looking for partners, such as distributors, system integrators, etc. for India?
A. Nuvoton is seeking opportunities in three different aspects, industry, education and media. In the Industry field, we would like to work with design houses first, which will help our company to maximise product features and function.
In education field, we seek opportunities to work with professors, offer MCU related classes, seminar and trainings.
In media field, we wish to increase media exposure in India by means of press releases, social media, advertising and trade shows opportunities.
Q. Are there any challenges that you have faced or you foresee in India?
A. The most challenging part of working in a developing economy like India is the currency depreciation. The rupee has fallen by more than 26 per cent in the past one year. This poses problem for our India-based distributors while quoting price to customers.
The second challenge is the wide spread range territory in India. Aiming core market and accordingly arranging logistics become a challenge when there are no clear industry clusters.
Q. Have you ever engaged in any marketing activity to generate business from India?
A. Nuvoton attended electronica 2010 India. Otherwise we have been hosting training seminars and co-seminars with distributors in India. We have also hosted webinars on request.
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