The Vietnam National University Integrated Circuit Design Research and Education Center (ICDREC) can provide chips to satisfy domestic demand, but it has to take a detour to reach that end.

ICDREC is the first unit in Vietnam which has successfully made IC chips, an achievement hailed by Vietnamese and international scientists, believed to lay a firm foundation for the development of Vietnam’s IC industry.

Nguyen Long, deputy secretary general of the Vietnam Association for Information Processing (VAIP), said it was impressive that ICDREC signed a cooperation contract with Japanese CM Engineering in IC designing.

Long said the domestic market has high demand for IC chips, which means that ICDREC has a vast market to exploit.

However, domestic enterprises do not use the chips ICDREC can provide, but buy the products from overseas.

“As far as I know, Panasonic, Sanyo and Hitachi usually use sensors with chips like the ones that ICDREC make. However, they tend to use chips provided by foreign firms instead of chips made in Vietnam,” Long said.

According to Long, the country’s IC development will depend heavily on the development of related industries.

Vietnam’s industries are believed to be worth billions of dollars, but most of the enterprises in the industries are foreign invested, which have relations with powerful foreign chip manufacturing companies.

Qualcomm and Intel are the two of the big names, and Taiwanese companies are also big chip suppliers.

Using the chips provided by prestigious companies remains the optimal choice for industry manufacturers.

Long said the manufacturers dare not put confidence in made-in-Vietnam chips’ quality.

And even if they believe in the high quality of Vietnam’s chips, they still are not sure if Vietnamese enterprises can provide chips in large quantities.

In other words, the capability of Vietnam in providing high-quality chips and the ability of fulfilling large orders remains questionable.

Long also pointed out that ICDREC will have to compete fiercely with Chinese chip suppliers to win orders from clients.

“Chinese-made chips have been flooding the Vietnamese market with very low prices. This is really a big challenge for Vietnamese enterprises which want to make products at competitive prices,” he commented.

An analyst, when asked what ICDREC should do to obtain clients, said ICDREC should take a detour, i.e., it should try to obtain contracts with foreign manufacturers on providing chips before it contacts domestic manufacturers and persuades them to use Vietnamese-made chips.

“This will take time, but I believe this is the right way. Domestic enterprises will accept Vietnam’s chips once foreign countries recognize the chips’ high quality,” he noted.

Source: Dat Viet