India to see next wave of solar cell production: Expert

Michael Splinter, President and CEO of Applied Materials is looking at India as the next stop for chip manufacturing. In a CNBC-TV18's special show Forbes India, Splinter said, "I think there are real possibilities in India to see next wave of solar cell manufacturing. New technologies as well as, utilizing existing technology to satisfy the solar mission here in India is a tremendous opportunity to create jobs in manufacturing."
Splinter is a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and has led Applied Materials to record revenue and profits during his tenure. Under his leadership, the company is helping drive global adoption of solar power by enabling a true inflection point in the cost-per-watt of solar energy.
Here is a verbatim transcript of his comments. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What brings you to India at this point in time. Applied Materials is looking at expanding in countries like China, Taiwan, South-East Asia and Korea because that is where your customers are setting up their new factories, so where does India figure in your scheme of things?
A: India has been a very large engineering and R&D centre for us for the last five-ten years. We have been growing our site primarily in Bangalore but we have three other sites around the country. It is very exciting possibility of what is going to happen here for future innovation in our fields; semi conductors and solar and display there. Every one of these areas needs new capabilities and new materials. So this is opportunity to work with some of the most innovative scientists in the world.

Q: You talked about opportunities within the chips space in India and while this has been something that the government has been trying to sort of bring investments into, we haven’t seen significant investments coming in as far as chip making facilities are concerned. We had a policy in 2007 which announced some sops, we are now expecting a revised policy which will pretty much bring in same sort of sops that we saw in 2007. There has been all sorts of estimate of USD 8-12 that is the size of the market that has been estimated for the chip business in India by 2012, how confident and optimistic are you about the chip market in India?

A: Chip market in India is going to continue to expand and I think those numbers are quite good estimates of what is happening. Consumer electronics are becoming more popular here as the economy expands. But as far as chip manufacturing really around the world, this area has been consolidating for some time. I think there are real possibilities in India to see next wave of solar cell manufacturing. New technologies as well as, utilizing existing technology to satisfy the solar mission here in India is a tremendous opportunity to create jobs in manufacturing, really in the whole eco system of solar deployment as the mission reaches its pinnacle 20 Gega Watts over the next 10 years or so.