BANGALORE: Texas Instruments (TI), the $13.84 billion technology giant, will increasingly focus on the smaller enterprises and startups in India especially for its analog technologies.

TI Analog senior VP Gregg Lowe said: “Our widespread sales footprint in the country enables us to reach out to smaller enterprises and technology startups.”

TI, which was one of the first tech MNC to start its R&D operations in Bangalore in 1985, has started focusing on the Indian market for its semiconductor technologies.

Mr Lowe said this strategy helps TI in the long run as they are able to get into such companies at an early stage and is likely to become its loyal customers. “Small customers are less price sensitive giving us better profit margins,” he remarked.

TI has been taking major strides in increasing the scope and utilisation of its analog technologies though at one point there was a debate that analog would phase out with the increasing use of digital. However, Mr Lowe said that as more things becomes digital there has been an increasing demand for analog chips.

The global market of analog is estimated to be around $35 billion and is highly fragmented. TI is now expecting a greater demand for analog in India and is picking on sectors like industrial and medical electronics to be early adopters. The total available market for analog in India was $142 million in 2006 and is expected to go upto $437 million by 2009.

Mr Lowe said that the advantage TI has in the marketplace is that it is able to bring an complete end-to-end solution. Complementing this is TI’s R&D centre in India, which has developed the expertise in building the entire solution.

The estimated consumption of hardware in 2006 was pegged at Rs 132,000 crore, and the balance demand was met through imports.

Though India does not figure among the top analog markets for TI, its growth rates are faster than the global average. The Indian analog market is growing five times the world’s average. In the same vein, TI is looking to popularise analog technologies through its academic initiatives.

TI India MD Biswadip Mitra said: “We are extending our existing academic relations programme in digital signal processing technologies to analog and hopefully every student is a potential customer for TI.”