Fairchild’s 10th year of business in Asia

ECN Asia spoke with Mark Thompson, president and chief executive officer of Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc., regarding the Company’s activities in China and Asia. Excerpts:



What are your key investments today?

Improving the environment by enabling energy-efficient products is a key focus for Fairchild. We invest 80 percent of our research and development dollars into technical solutions that reduce energy consumption in electronic applications from white goods to light bulbs and automobiles to mobile communications appliances.



You mentioned the “green” movement. As we all know, China recently launched its own RoHS directive. What is Fairchild’s status in complying with the new initiatives?

In February 2006, Fairchild announced that is was shipping its complete portfolio of basic marked components – totaling more than 34,000 products – in configurations that conform to the European RoHS directive. We are also compliant with phase one of China’s RoHS initiative and we are supplying all required information necessary to meet the directive at this time. It is our intent to comply with phase two, and we will work with the local testing facilities to comply.

Give us a brief overview of Fairchild’s recent achievements in the China market. What are the key factors for success in doing business here?

Through unrelenting focus on power and energy efficiency, Fairchild has grown its China revenues to $456 million in 2006. Today, we have an unrivalled power product portfolio, including the ability to deliver production-ready power solutions when the customer needs them. The customer-centric way of doing business is a key element behind Fairchild’s success in China. Supplying the right products at the right time to the right people is what makes us successful. To do this, we have strengthened the support we offer to our customers with the proliferation of Global Power Resource Design Centers worldwide. We now have 15 mainland China sales offices, four Global Power Resource Centers, three joint labs, and two IC design centers in Beijing and Shanghai. Our Global Power Resource Centers focus their activities on the application areas most relevant to their local customer base. For example, the Shenzhen Center concentrates on consumer, PC power, backlight, and charger applications. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Center focuses on telecomms, consumer, home appliance, and GFI applications. The Qingdao Center concentrates on consumer to support domestic white good manufacturers.



How about your business in Asia as a whole?

Asia is once again the key market for the company – with 55 percent of global sales generated from this region at the end of 2006. Moreover, Fairchild validated its position as “the power franchise.” Our capability to leverage advanced process and packaging technologies and our ability to integrate power analog and power discrete functionality into innovative packaging had a strong impact on the energy efficiency and cost/performance of our customer’s applications.



Fairchild recently bought System General. Why did you choose the acquisition strategy to strengthen operations in this region?

Our acquisition strategy is to look for products that strengthen and compliment our focus on energy efficiency in the power analog, power discrete, and signal power areas. System General has one of the top Asia-based power analog management teams, and their growing portfolio of pulse width modulated (PWM) controllers, desktop PC power supply supervisor and combo ICs, and power factor correction (PFC) controllers, coupled with their customer relationships and strong local field applications support has made them a significant competitor in the AC/DC power conversion market of Taiwan and China.



The company has been operating in Asia for a decade, how do you plan to move the business forward?

As we move into our 10th year of business here, we will concentrate not only in China but the Asian region as a whole. We have manufacturing facilities in the Philippines and Malaysia, and employ more than 6,000 staff across Asia. I am convinced that Asia and Greater China will increasingly become the global powerhouse for new product development. It’s why we also have Global Power Resource Centers in Taipei, Tainan and Taoyuan, and have recently cemented our investments in these regions. We will continue to leverage our leadership position in power and will use our vast knowledge of our customers’ needs, market trends, and our strong capabilities in semiconductor technology to develop energy-efficient solutions that help advance the electronics market.