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EU countries team up for semiconductor push

reuters.com

231–240 of 665 posts

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#231

Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...

Germany: Infineon Don't know about the others.

ST Microelectronics from France and Italy

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#232
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland knows a thing or two, even if not present in the headline.

Are you Finnish? I'm really curious what happened to all those hardware and electrical engineers developing phones for Nokia/Microsoft before they went bust, respawned as HMD, packed up and moved their production and R&D to China. Did they pivot to other industries in Finland? If so, which industries? Were they valued as much in the other industries or did they take significant pay cuts? Or did they have to pack up a…

Am not OP. Am Finnish.

Basically they went to work to other companies and spun up lot of new ones.

There are lots of small and medium sized companies in Finland that are operating in technology and hardware.

I presume a majority of them had similar salaries as earlier. Engineers have never been well payed in Finland and Nokia knew the market rate very well. It rewarded few individuals very well, but the general salary range was probably nothing special.

Finland has lots of engineering activity - always has had. The problem has been marketing this knowhow to external markets.

Explosion of Nokia was a blessing for Finland. It was too large for a country this small, and it started domineering investments in all levels of economy.

From geek consumer point of view it is a shame their engineering was run down by poor management.

But the company was fixed on this course from it's early years. It basically trusted on two things - that radiotechnology would be it's secret sauce for all eternity, and the main point of competition would be it's logistics network.

When the radiotechnology used in handsets became commoditized, China basically levelled the playing field regarding logistics and outsourcing, and the software development inside the company remained a second tier effort, it could have not ended any other way (in retrospect).

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Not everybody from Europe wants to go to North America - US specifically starts to feel weird for non US citizens - There are immigration laws

" US specifically starts to feel weird for non US citizens". - The US is the largest importer of immigrants now and for many decades prior. Weird, right?

Weird for non citizens to live in US, not weird that one of the countries with highest capacity to absorb immigration and with highest salaries in the world has big immigration flows.

Besides that I think some people from US might be biased on the feeling of Europe towards US. If you just know Europeans living in US you will have a wrong perception, mostly because Europeans living in US are here because they want to do so not because they were forced to move.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#234

Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...

STMicroelectronics is, according to Wikipedia, Europe's largest semiconductor chip maker based on revenue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STMicroelectronics

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#235

Unfortunately, does anyone even takes the EU serious nowadays in tech? The more I follow the European tech scene, the more disappointed I become. EU's biggest tech company aside of ARM is Spotify... Almost every second startup I read about in https://www.eu-startups.com/ is a fintech/budgeting app which is trying to "disrupt" banking. Revolut is the biggest player, yet they are literally throwing money to achieve a m…

Europe specialises in companies that you will never hear about. These are massive corporations that don't directly face consumers. We aren't into consumer technology or consumer electronics as much as the US is.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#236
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you gotta worry u won't lose your job though right? Which becomes more and more realistic as you age. So just when you need insurance the most you may lose your insurance - nice system.

Not just age, an accident, diagnosis with a disease, etc. can happen to young people as well. Then you suddenly discover that your american insurance doesn't pay, or only a small fraction of the price...

Why the heck do u guys keep going with this system? I can't wrap my head around it.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#238
post #111
post #8

This is a great decision! I never understood why Europe under-invested in semi considering the talents they have and the strategic nature of it. Intel is dying a slow death, ARM is leaving UK's control, and TSMC is slowly taken over by China. The tables are turning.

Most competitive chips in the world are produced by machines made in the Netherlands at ASMI/ASML The US companies do what they do best: innovate business models and find ways to vendor lock in and own the market. But who's been doing all the research keeping moore's law alive? Lithography? For a country as small as the Netherlands, you can wonder if we could afford from a geopolitical point of view to be producing a…

ASML is heavily reliant on the IP of Cymer an American company they bought in the last decade. And a great deal of their R&D is in the US, including things like software, measurement systems and sensors, robotics and automation, and so forth. What the US does best is quietly prop up international companies like ASML (and ARM, whose texas R&D center has been the leader for years) that wouldn't be able to hack it on their own without American talent.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#240

Why isn't Netherlands mentioned btw? What semiconductors companies did Germany , France and Spain built so far? Netherlands has ASML, NXP and ASM...

STMicroelectronics is, according to Wikipedia, Europe's largest semiconductor chip maker based on revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STMicroelectronics

ASML dwarfs it in terms of market cap.
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