Since last year, European politicians have been discussing the idea that by the end of the decade, up to 20% of the world’s semiconductor products should be produced in the region using advanced technology. Not only industrial countries are part of this race; but also those who have historically been strong in other areas – such as Spain.
Local Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that the country’s authorities are ready to use the funds of the European pandemic fund in the amount of 11 billion euros to develop the national semiconductor industry. The official said: “We want our country to be at the forefront of industrial and technological progress”. The Spanish cabinet is due to approve a stimulus package soon.
According to Bloomberg, Spanish subsidies will be directed to the development of semiconductor components and technologies for their production. Note that in mid-March, Intel Corporation, although it ranks Spain among those countries where it would like to place manufacturing enterprises in the current decade, in the text of the press release discusses only the local computer center in Barcelona, where the creation of a supercomputer took place its support. For this reason, it is difficult to judge whether Intel itself intends to organize some kind of chip production or development in Spain. In Italy, the company will locate a facility for testing and packaging chips, in Germany, the production of chips with microprocessor developments of third-party clients will take place, and in France there will be an Intel research center.
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Spain is ready to invest €11 billion in the semiconductor industry
To judge the degree of saturation of the world market with semiconductor product, we have statistics of the industry organization SIA, which focuses on the financial results of January. The first month of the year increased revenue from chip sales by 26.8% year-on-year to $50.7 billion; while sequentially the amount decreased by only 0.2%. Note that this result is the second largest for January in the entire history of observations.
Such dynamics only proves that the demand for semiconductor components continues to grow. For ten months in a row, core revenue has been increasing by more than 20% year-on-year, every month. The American market, which unites both continents of the same name, increased revenue from the sale of semiconductor components; by 40.2% compared to January 2021. Europe came in second with an increase of 28.7%; China came in third (+24.4%), Japan came in fifth (+18.9%); Asia-Pacific and all other countries squeezed between them in fourth position ( +21%=. Europe was the only region where semiconductor revenue increased by 3.4% compared to December; excluding a modest increase of 0.4% in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere.
Good ideas of development which I wish African countries can be given a chance to participate take part.
Ideas on a higher level to develop the world economy.
EU should produce everything locally and stop relying on China for almost everything. Create jobs in the EU and be more resilient in case of pandemics, wars or whatever.