The company is considering setting up its second R&D facility in the country soon which is likely to be located in Hyderabad or Bangalore, country director of STMicroelectronics Ltd India Pradeep Kumar said.

The European company has already invested $20 million in the country. It has an existing wholly-owned subsidiary in India which has been developing software and designing integrated circuits since 1992. Its R&D centre in Noida near Delhi is the fourth largest worldwide and largest after the European ones. The company has 31 such centres worldwide.

STMicroelectronics India has just added a Rs 25-crore new design and development wing at the four-year-old Noida facility which will house 350 additional skilled design and software engineers. This will be in addition to the 450 alreadyemployed.

The 100 per cent EOU has been registering 60 per cent growth in the last four years. It had an exports turnover of $8.9 million in 1997-98 which went up to $12.8 million in 1998-99. The company earned a profit of $1.1 million in 1997-98.

Explaining the focus on Indian market, president and chief executive officer of STMicroelectronics Group Pasquale Pistorio said, ``the booming electronics industry requires more and more IP blocks combining hardware and software. Design and development of these is brain-intensive. India offers an excellent intellectual property base and low capital costs and a total environment which is very good for massive production of IP blocks for export to our European units.''

The company has identified computer peripherals, digital consumer products, automotive sector, telecom and smart cards as its priority segments. IP is a small usable cell that forms core of a microprocessor. ST is working on solutions for third generation CDMA mobile telephone design.