Industry Expert Blogs

In June of 2013 Edward Snowden copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). His actions exposed numerous surveillance programs that many governments around the world reacted to, including China. In September of 2013 China Vice Premier Ma Kai declared semiconductors a key sector for the security of China. As a result Chinese mobile carriers replaced American made networking equipment (Cisco) and the Chinese givernment has pledged more than $100B to internal semiconductor development including SoCs. A modern SoC has billions of gates and it only takes a handful to create a back door, right?

To secure smartphones the Chinese government tapped Spreadtrum Communications CEO Leo Li to make special-order “safe” SoCs to foil foreign spies. At the end of 2013 the publicly held Spreadtrum was acquired by Tsinghua Unigroup (backed by the Chinese government) for $1.78B. As a result, Spreadtrum has grown rapidly and now has R&D facilities in Shanghai, Beijing Tianjin, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen, San Diego, San Jose, Finland, and India. Spreadtrum is privately held now so revenues are not reported but from what I understand they will come very close to $2B in 2016 making them one of the top ten fabless semiconductor companies.

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