Diversifying Supply Chain: Synaptics' Strategic Move to India

In a strategic move to diversify its supply chain and mitigate risks, US-based semiconductor company Synaptics Inc plans to assemble and package at least 10% of its chips in India starting from 2027. Michael Hurlston, President and CEO of Synaptics, shared this development with TOI during an event.

The company aims to utilize a facility in Hyderabad, currently being set up by a joint venture between Advanced System in Package Technologies (ASIP) and South Korea's APACT, for outsourced semiconductor assembly and test services (OSAT). This move is expected to be operational around late 2025 or early 2026, contingent on the facility's readiness and successful qualification tests.

Hurlston emphasized the importance of reducing reliance on China for chip packaging, not just due to geopolitical issues, but to ensure a diversified supply chain. Synaptics, known for providing touch, display interfaces, and connectivity devices to brands like Dell, HP, Samsung, and Apple, is also concerned about proposed tariffs by the US government, which could increase costs and impact demand.

In addition to this strategic shift, Synaptics has partnered with Chennai-based embedded software engineering firm embed UR to develop edge-based artificial intelligence (edge AI) solutions. These applications, targeting image segmentation, facial identification, and pose estimation, aim to enable low-latency AI processing within chips for smart home, driver assistance systems, medical monitoring, and industrial manufacturing applications.