Intel Corp, the world’s biggest chipmaker, has announced plans to build a $2.5bn chip factory in China, boosting its investments in the country to $4bn.
The Intel factory will be China’s biggest foreign high-technology investment to date, and analysts say the project could signal a landmark shift in the Chinese economy from labour-intensive manufacturing to more advanced production methods.
Speaking at a news conference in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Paul Otellini said the move would pave the way for a bigger US presence in the booming Chinese market.
“Our goal in China is to support a transition from ‘manufactured in China’ to ‘innovated in China.'”
Significant to this project is that the China market alone can consume the product of this factory.
From the article:
“The Dalian plant is to produce chips using 90-nanometer technology, which refers to circuits 90 billionths of a metre wide.
That is not the industry’s highest standard, but Intel said it believed that it would not be able to obtain a US licence to export more advanced technology to China.”
Well, doggone it, there goes my new $200 8Gig monster PC.
IBM can put whatever spin they want on it, but in the end they’re looking for cheap labour.
Methinks they’re gonna flood the chinese market with pentium 3 machines.
That or use that plant to manufacture the motherboard chipsets.
Let’s build a chip fabrication plant in China so they can rip off the technology. Yeah, that’s really smart! I guarantee that once they’ve stolen every secret out of this plant, they’ll be building a hundred more just like it and undercutting Intel on price. This will probably be the first and last plant Intel builds in China. Unless they’re stupid enough to build an even more advanced chip fabrication so the Chinese can copy it. Come on people, this is one of the few things left our country has to export. How else are we going to pay our trillion dollar debt to China?
#4 – …this is one of the few things left our country has to export.
There’s quite a few chip plants in the rest of the world. China will get some of them, with or without Intel’s involvement.
You notice the comment at the press conference was something about “Innovated in China,” but they are going to build a 90 nm fab, that will be 2 generations old when it actually comes on line in a couple of years.
They will make volume crap like memory and/or general purpose chips and chipsets. Nothing cutting edge will be produced at this plant. By the time the Chinese get around to stealing the technology and building a copy cat of this fab, it will be drastically out of date.
Intel aint as stupid as one might think.
Wait, does intel still produce memory? I can’t remember.
Ahso!
Don
#6: “Intel aint as stupid as one might think.”
Maybe … and then again maybe not. From http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_45/b4008057.htm:
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO ) sued Huawei (Chinese Telecom Equipment giant) in 2002 for allegedly stealing Cisco’s router technology, and General Motors Corp. (GM ) took Chery (Chinese Auto Maker) to court in 2004 for allegedly copying a GM design for Chery’s popular QQ compact.
I have heard that after the Chinese Cisco plant finishes making Cisco routers for the day, they make some more, with cheaper RAM, etc. and sell these as legitimate Cisco routers. These end up on E-Bay and when they break down, Cisco of course refuses to honor any type of warantee. See http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/102306counterfeit.html
One thing many people may not realize is that China has a policy of only allowing foreign companies to sell products without too much restrictions if and only if the company has a plant creating said product in the country. So, this seems more like a way for Intel to break into the Chinese market than anything else.
7 – That’s a very interesting link – thanks. Interesting that the first incident in the story involved a registered Cisco reseller. I’d expect Cisco to do something about that. Stories like that have got to hit eBay pretty hard, I’d think.
#7 *hands you a cookie*
You just solved the riddle of why some counterfeit goods are so similar to the original product.