CSR CEO: On fabless biz and wireless tech

By Srinivas The short range low power wireless chip maker CSR is one of the successful example in fabless semiconductor business. CSR has seen tremendous growth in Bluetooth wireless ICs and is now targeting wearable and IoT market. In a video interview with me, Mr. Joep van Beurden, Chief Executive Officer, CSR shared his experience in fabless business and also about Bluetooth Smart. Below are the excerpts from the interview. What are the risk factors involved in developing silicon products both IP and ICs? Joep van Beurden: Some risk factors are very generic, for instance when you design a product you typically tend to be very innovative and boost the boundaries to get something new. Since it is new it may take longer than what you plan, we might have planned for the product to take two years, it would actually take three years, by then competitor might have already launched similar product. Another generic risk factor is even if you're on time your customer is not successful then you suffer. The flipside is also true, if you sell your product to a successful end-user, which may result in good growth. The risk factor for fabless is, fabless companies have no assets, you have just peoples and engineers designing the chip and then you are outsourcing the production to foundries such as TSMC, UMC, globalfoundries. You are heavily relying on people and you...