China: Focus on CE, industrial and networking markets

In the early 1990s when Linear Technology established its first office in China, it had only a few application engineers and sales staff. Today, the company has expanded to four offices in the country, located in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, and is known as a front-runner in the analog integrated circuit market with over 7,500 product offerings.



Sam Koh, China area sales manager, Linear Technology, said, “Offering the right innovative products and speedy on-time delivery is the way to do business in China. Another core strength is the ability to identify technology trends.”MAIN PRODUCT LINES

Linear has a broad product portfolio which serves many diverse markets. In terms of revenue, the company’s top three product lines in China are networking and telecommunications, industrial, and high-end consumer electronics. For networking and telecommunications, some of Linear’s product lines include LTM460x, LTC292x, LT55x, LTC3828 and LTC3773 series.



Koh also emphasized the importance of the industrial market in China, as the country rapidly builds and improves its infrastructure. “Our highperformance signal chain devices are being used for the advancement of industrial control and monitoring equipment,” added Koh.



The high-end consumer electronics market in China is also growing rapidly with the introduction of multifunction camera phones, media players and GPS navigators. Linear’s offerings in this segment include dual DC/DC converters with USB power manager and other small, highly efficient powermanagement products such as LTC3550, LTC3552 and LTC3549.



OUTLOOK FOR 2007

China is a pivotal market for most of the semiconductor companies. Like its other regional branches, Linear Technology’s objective has always been to innovate and deliver high-performance analog ICs. Now that China strives to shift from being a manufacturing-based industry to developing its own leading-edge products, local companies will increasingly need high-performance analog ICs to differentiate their products from the rest of the world. Koh said, “Linear Technology will be able to serve China’s technology needs now and in the future.”