Meantime Siemens AG, which does not yet show up on the charts of the world’s major semiconductor manufacturers, soon will when its vast new Dresden complex comes on stream and it has completed a new $700m plant for application-specific parts that it reportedly intends to build. According to the Financial Times, Siemens is prospecting for a site to fabricate parts for use in cellular telephones and Smart Cards, and the paper says the UK and Austria are the favoured locations – although it does not speculate on the possibility that Siemens is looking to buy and expand an existing company rather than build a new plant on a greenfield site – the Mnchener could well be considering making offers for either Austria Mikro Systeme AG or the GEC Plessey Semiconductors Ltd arm of GEC Plc, both of which major on ASICs – but greenfield sites in Eire and Portugal are also said to be under consideration for the Siemens plant.
