Government to set up four semiconductor plants in next 5 years

The government is planning to have at least three to four semiconductor fabrication plants in the next five years, as the country gears up for the first indigenous chip roll-out in December this year, Union IT and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in New Delhi on Wednesday. In his remarks at the launch of PhonePe’s native, Android-based Indus Appstore at the Bharat Mandapam in the capital, the minister said the next level of productivity in chips will come from advanced manufacturing and packaging.

“We will soon see at least three or three more approvals in fab and assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP),” he added.

Earlier this month, the government announced that it will set up a semiconductor packaging plant in Assam in collaboration with the Tata Group. Previously, there have been efforts to set up fabrication facilities in the state of Gujarat.

Indus Appstore is PhonePe’s attempt at creating a more competitive and localised mobile app store economy for India, which is already the largest mobile app download market globally. It allows Indian consumers to download over 2 lakh mobile apps and games, across 45 categories. Users will be able to discover these apps conveniently in 12 Indian languages, thereby catering to 95 percent of Indians’ language preferences, PhonePe said in a statement.

“Indus Appstore challenges the status quo, ushering in an era of more healthy competition in the mobile app marketplace, which in turn should help create a more democratic and vibrant Indian digital ecosystem,” said Sameer Nigam, CEO and Founder, PhonePe.

Indus Appstore will take on Google’s Play Store, which is the default app marketplace on millions of smartphones. Several developers have decried Google’s monopoly in the Android phone market and have even criticised the company for charging huge commissions from developers. At the same time, OEMs such as Samsung offer their marketplace in parallel to the Play Store. Indus Appstore will work the same way as these app stores, but it is currently unclear how users will gain access to it on their smartphones. Whether smartphone brands will preload PhonePe’s Indus Appstore on their devices is also something only time will tell.

— Written with inputs from IANS