ST Microelectronics is a Switzerland based semiconductor manufacturing company. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It had revenues of $10 billion in 2007. STMicroelectronics was formed in June 1987 by the merger of semiconductor companies SGS Microelettronica of Italy and Thomson Semiconducteurs which is the semiconductor subsidiary of France’s Thomson group. It was called by the name of SGS-THOMSON until May 1998 when Thomson SA withdrew as its owner. ST is the world’s fifth largest semiconductor company and makes / designs semiconductors for Communications, Consumer, Computer, Automotive and Industrial sectors.
StMicroelectronics owns and operates both front end and back end plants. It employs thousands of employees in its manufacturing and assembly facilities in Milan and Catania Italy, Grenob and Rousset, France. The Grenob facility is an important centre and employs 6000 staff. The Crolles site has an 8 inch fab and a 12 inch fab was inaugrated by President Jacques Chirac in 2003. Other facilities are Tours France, Ang Mo Kio Singapore and Greater Noida and Bangalore, India
The company’s assembly plants are in Malta where it employs about 2200 staff. Also in Guar – Malaysia where it has about 4000 staff, Shenzhen economic zone in Guangdong Province in China near hong kong. Another plant is being planned for Longgang in China.
ST Microelectronics has many design centres (semiconductor design, chip design, IC according to its business verticals and strategic relationships with other companies. It has a design Centre in Greater Noida, India where it employs 1700 staff including R & D engineers, chip designers, software engineers and other technical staff. Other design centres are in Bristol UK, Rabat Morocco, Naples Italy, Lecce Italy, Greater Noida India, San Jose – Silicon valley california, usa , La jolla – san diego, lancaster – pennsylvania, prague in the czech republic, Tunis in Tunisia, Sofia Antipolis in France, Edinburgh UK, Grasbrunn in Germany, Ottawa in Canada, Palermo in SIcily in Italy, Bangalore in India, Zaventem in Belgium, Helsinki and Turku in Finland, Oulu and Tampere in FInland and Longmont USA.
Some american sites in Phoenix, Arizona 8 inch fab, Carrolton Texas 6 inch fab and Ain Sebba – Bouskoura Morocco fab near Casablanca are either being closed or are to be closed down soon.
ST Microsystems has many future partnerships which will aid in the company’s growth in future. It has 33% stake in ST/Hynix joint venture. ST also bought Nokia’s microchip development team and plans to invest heavily in the ASIC applications space. ST microelectronics also acquired 91% stake in Genesis Microchip in 2007 which has core strength in video processing field (faroudja echnology) and centres in Santa Clara, Toronto (Canada) and Bangalore – IT city of India.