The health of the European microelectronics industry has never been better. This was the message from Monte Carlo last week and the annual forum of MEDEA+, the pan-European microelectronics initiative.
In many key areas, Europe and the US are fighting it out for supremacy, and lithography is probably the most important of these. “We are the first company in the world to ship an EUV system and we are the first company in the world to have the first order for the production of EUV systems,” said Eric Meurice, CEO of ASML.
Another key area is automotive electronics, because it is now such a fast growing market which already uses more chips, measured by value, than the wired telecommunications industry.
“The European region is number one for automotive electronics in the world,” said Dr Ulrich Schaefer of Bosch. “There are lots of reasons why it makes sense to produce automotive electronics in Europe and send them to other parts of the world because you need lots of highly skilled workers and sophisticated, high-reliability systems. It requires a different way of thinking to that needed for consumer electronics. It will stay here for at least the next 15 years.”
Besides Europe’s strength in wireless, which we almost take for granted these days, there is another growing area where European companies are pre-eminent, helped by early R&D initiatives pioneered by MEDEA+.
“European companies have 90 per cent of the world smartcard market and the European chip makers, Infineon, NXP and STMicroelectroncs have 60 per cent of the world market for chips which go into smartcards,” said Arthur van der Poel, chairman of MEDEA+.
Frans van Houten, CEO of NXP Semiconductors, said: “Even the American passports have European chips inside.”