Foxconn junks $19.5-bn Vedanta chip JV plan

New Delhi Taiwan’s Foxconn has withdrawn from a $19.5 billion semiconductor joint venture with mining baron Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd as the venture struggled to get a technology partner to make chips that are used in mobile phones to refrigerators and cars.

In a statement, Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, said it “has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta.”

Agarwal’s metals-to-oil conglomerate responded saying it was “fully committed to its semiconductor fab project and we have lined up other partners to set up India’s first foundry.” It however did not give details of the new partners. Foxconn, best known for assembling iPhones and other Apple products, and Vedanta last year signed a pact to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Gujarat. European chipmaker STMicroelectronics was being roped in as a technology partner for the venture but talks were deadlocked. Most of the world’s chips are manufactured in a handful of countries and India, which expects its semiconductor market to be worth $63 billion by 2026, is a late entrant.

Three applications - one from the Vedanta-Foxconn joint venture, another from a global consortium of ISMC and one from Singapore-based IGSS Ventures - were received in response to the government’s incentive scheme for local manufacture of semiconductors. The other two applications too haven’t made much progress.