China's strong expansion of the semiconductor market

According to Bloomberg, Silicon Valley investors are no longer interested in semiconductors and have largely moved to the software industry. At the same time, the mainland enterprises’ investment in semiconductors has become more and more prosperous under the government support awards.

Current U.S. investors invest their money in social networking sites, e-commerce, and online gaming companies. Investment in chip factories has fallen to the bottom of the past 12 years, even if the chip is fundamental to all computing, from computers and mobile phones to nuclear warheads. Still losing the care of most investors.

The problem lies in the initial cost of the semiconductor industry, which is pushing companies to set up factories in countries that offer preferential tariff rates and government subsidies. On the other hand, the initial cost of opening a software or network company is getting lower and lower under the prevalence of cheap network applications and services.

Ken Lawler, a partner of investment firm Battery Ventures, said that although the semiconductor industry is not lacking in new ideas, it is increasingly difficult to find investors. The time and cost required to implement the idea are too high.

The situation on the mainland is very different. The mainland government's construction plan focusing on semiconductors has made it more and more influential in product design and innovation. According to an accounting firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, in November, the global share of chip-related patents in the mainland climbed to 33% in 2010, compared to 22% in 2010.

Matt Cowan, co-founder of investment firm Bridgescale, pointed out that the United States needs to worry about its global competitiveness. American funding! According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) data, the amount of risk financing for US semiconductor companies in the first quarter of 2010 was 36% lower than the same period in 2008, from US$1.39 billion to US$895 million.

Of the 16 NVCA statistics, the proportion of venture capital invested by chip companies fell to 1.1% for the first time. The highest proportion of software companies is 17%. In the past two years, investors have invested billions of dollars in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, social networking company Zynga, and Groupon. At the same time, new-style angel investors specializing in cultivating emerging Internet companies? It walks live C

Manuel Henriquez, chief executive of Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which specializes in providing loans for start-up companies, said that semiconductor companies are not sexy enough to get attention. Outside the semiconductor companies almost no activity.

The term Silicon Valley appeared in the 1970s. It refers to the San Francisco-San Jose area 50 miles long, with National Semiconductor, Intel, and AMD. The company that manufactures silicon components.

But today, building a first-class fab will cost 4 billion U.S. dollars and 5 years. MaxLinear is one of the few US semiconductor companies listed in the past two years. Kishore Seendripu, chief executive of the company, said that this is not a very reliable construction plan.

In fact, most manufacturers do not produce their own products but outsource to Taiwanese OEMs. Semiconductor Industry Association SEMI data show that Taiwan’s semiconductor output surpassed the United States in 2005 and continues to this day.

Seendripu founded MaxLinear with his own money, producing set-top boxes (STB), digital TVs, computers and mobile phone chips. In order to pay for initial production operations, MaxLinear must transfer the data to a Taiwanese company. Seendripu stated that MaxLinear could not find funds at the beginning and only then completed its first public offering (IPO) with the assistance of banking institutions Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley. The company listed so far, stocks? w fell 25%.

The turbulent demand for consumer electronics has also made investors more ambiguous for chip makers. Seendripu said that the turbulent nature of the market means that if manufacturers want to increase their capital, they must have a very high profit or have a large coffee client.

Dado Banatao, an industry veteran of investment firm Tallwood Venture Capital, said he hopes he can stand firm in the semiconductor investment business. The veteran who once served as director of National Semiconductor and has 37 years of experience in the industry, has been assisting the semiconductor company's initial operations for the past 10 years.

In the past five years, Banatao began to encourage his company to develop overseas, especially the mainland, in order to use the government's funding and reduce production costs. Banatao said that in the past, the company would not begin thinking about cross-sea operations until it reached a certain scale. But now, as soon as the company is well established, it begins to wonder about overseas development.

Puhua data shows that since 2009, semiconductor companies in the mainland IPO have surpassed the United States. In 2009, the capital market in mainland China accounted for 80% of IPOs for all chip makers. The Semiconductor Manufacturers Association estimated that with the growth of Asian economy, the growth of global chip revenue in 2010 will reach 33%, exceeding US$300 billion.