Is China's fabless model sustainable?

Junko Yoshida, EETimes
6/19/2012 9:11 AM EDT

BEIJING -- Let’s face it. China’s IC industry still lacks its own superstars – equivalent to Intel, Qualcomm or Broadcom in the West – in terms of the scale, reach and quality these brands possess on the global market.

To belabor the point, how many U.S. design engineers can name, say, the top 10 Chinese chip vendors destined to become their fierce competitors in three years from now? The question is tough because Chinese fabless companies, while growing fast, are still small. Many also remain faceless.

In contrast, a Chinese executive based in Beijing, speaking with ee Times, rattled off Spreadtrum, RDA Microelectronics, GalaxyCore and GigaDevice as his “top four” picks among local fabless companies likely to become key players in the smartphone IC ecosystem. The executive, heading up a U.S.-based chip company’s R&D team, believes that will happen not within the decade, but in just a few years.

Is he right?

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