The race is to the highest volume producer, with the lowest costs, and the most advanced technology – just as it always was, Andrea Cuomo, senior vp at STMicroelectronics told the IEF2011 meeting in Seville this morning, adding that the brightest future for the industry lies in the combination of life sciences and electronics.
"Technology and volumes will set the rules of the game: the winners will have greater economies of scale, better inventory cost controls, state-of-the-art technology and the ability to continuously roll out winning product architectures," said Cuomo.
Volumes will rise, lithographies shrink, 450mm wafers will come and barriers to entry will rise, said Cuomo.
Customers, even major customers, are buying platforms "and even turnkey solutions", reckoned Cuomo, with hardware no longer the driving force as consumers look to buy services and the means to access them.
Consumers are the key to the economy and consumer debt has been underpinning their spending, said Cuomo, and while the public authorities have turned private debt into public debt, so diminishing the risk on consumers, nonetheless instability remains.
Like others, Cuomo pointed to opportunities in healthcare, energy saving, food chain and pollution control, safety/security and intellectual life, but he saw the brightest long-term future in the inter-action of life sciences with electronics.
Cuomo instanced California’s ‘Spiny Lobster’ whose nervous system had been replicated in silicon via pattern generators.
"The combination of electronics and life sciences will open totally new perspectives for mankind," said Cuomo.
