Microchip Technology is a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, providing low-risk product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. The company offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. Ganesh Moorthy, M.B.A. in marketing from the National University, Sacramento, Calif.; a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.; and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Bombay, is serving as Chief Operating Officer for Microchip Technology Incorporated since June 2009. He shares his candid thoughts with ELE Times on Semiconductor Industry Review and Outlook.
ELE Times: How Microchip reviews the industry in 2015?
Ganesh Moorthy: 2015 was a difficult year for the semiconductor industry. The year began with uncertainty caused by the slowdown in business in the latter part of 2014. After what seemed like a normal start in Q1 2015, a number of factors led to a significant slowdown through the rest of 2015. The economic slowdown in China, the strength of the dollar against other currencies, and very modest GDP growth in the U.S. contributed to the semiconductor industry declining in revenue in 2015.
ELE Times: How Microchip has performed in 2015 and what is the forecast for 2016?
Ganesh Moorthy: Microchip performed better than our peers in 2015, in part because we had acquisitions that contributed to our growth and in part because we continued to gain market share in our historical businesses.
ELE Times: How Microchip sees the global semiconductor industry in 2016, particularly challenges that Microchip and the industry will possibly face and the plans to tackle them?
Ganesh Moorthy: Growth continues to be the largest challenge for the semiconductor industry. The global economies are still not strong, and while we are optimistic that 2016 will see some growth because excess inventory built by customers in 2015 has largely worked itself out, the catalysts for more robust growth remain elusive.
ELE Times: What in your opinion would be the consolidation trends in 2016?
Ganesh Moorthy: 2015 was a year of unprecedented consolidations in the semiconductor industry. Well over $100B of M&A was announced in 2015, which was greater than the cumulative M&A in the last 10 years! The industry is restructuring rapidly, reflective of a maturing industry with insufficient growth. We expect more consolidation to take place in 2016, although perhaps at a lower pace than the record pace in 2015.
ELE Times: What do you thing would be the hot products, applications and technologies in 2016 and how Microchip prepares to seize these opportunities?
Ganesh Moorthy: Microchip sees significant opportunity in many applications – Internet of Things, Automotive, Efficient Motor control, Efficient Power Conversion, LED lighting, Embedded Wireless, Industrial Ethernet, Touch Sensing, Gesture, Home Appliances, Medical devices and many more. Microchip continues to invest in delivering new and innovative solutions (silicon, software, development tools, reference designs etc.) for these applications, to invest in technical training and support to enable our customers to achieve innovation in their end products, and to invest in the manufacturing capacity to ensure that our customers can achieve their revenue growth once they are ready for production.
