Europe’s ambition to make the most powerful computer chips risks wasting billions of euros, a German think tank said in a report on Thursday, urging policy makers to focus instead on rebuilding the region’s chip design industry.
The EU executive’s new goal of doubling its global semiconductor share by 2030 is doomed to fail because the bloc lacks a meaningful market that any super-advanced chip foundry could sell into, author Jan-Peter Kleinhans said.
“For an EU foundry there is simply no business case at the moment in Europe, mainly for the lack of customers,” said Kleinhans, an analyst at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV) think tank in Berlin.
The European Commission last month launched a 10-year plan, the Digital Compass, setting its sights on a 20% global semiconductor market share and building a fabrication plant, or fab, that can make superfast 2 nanometer chips.
The push has gained urgency due to supply-chain dislocations caused by a sharp recovery in demand for products ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles following a slump at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic a year ago.
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