“The semiconductor Europe has lost more than one battle, but it is still in the game, of course, we are out on certain fronts, such as memories, also because there are no longer large customers, large companies in the field of mobile telephony rather than in electronics or consumer. For this we had to reinvent our skills”. So, in one of his rare interviews Jean Marc Chéry, who at the end of 2018 inherited the leadership of Stm from Carlo Bozotti. A French manager but, above all, a veteran of the joint venture controlled in equal shares by France and Italy, in which he has been active since he left the transalpine Grandes Ecoles system.
“What are the fields today in which Europe can still play a leading role – he asked in a meeting with Les Echos -? Definitely the car, then aeronautics, space and the biomedical. And it is no coincidence that these are the sectors in which European industry still has a leading role. Thanks to us at Stm, to the Germans of Infineon and to Nxp”. This is how the latest success of the chip manufacturer can be explained capable of winning a piece of Starlink, the visionary project conceived by Elon Musk's SpaceX to bring fast connection to the most remote areas of the world.
According to the US site Business Insider, the American company has entrusted STM with the production of one million satellite receivers needed to allow users to access the network. A maxi contract that could be worth around 2,4 billion dollars given that – reports a financial source to the American site – the agreement provides for the supply at 2.400 dollars a piece. Impossible to get a confirmation from the company, which is bound by industrial secrecy. For now it is known that the project announced by Elon Musk in 2015 only entered its operational phase in October with the aim of bringing a constellation of 12 satellites into orbit to allow access to the network even from the most remote corners of the planet.
So far SpaceX has managed to put around 800 satellites into orbit. The last 60 were added last November 25 transported into space by the Falcon 9 rocket. All carry STM technology reception devices, which thus adds the name of another prestigious customer after Apple. Big customer of gyros created by team led by Benedetto Vigna, one of the brains of the company who has been able to make a virtue of necessity. A formula appreciated by the market that gratifies the stock with a 44% increase in the last six months.
Cut off from businesses that require large economies of scale, now the exclusive preserve of Asian manufacturers, STM has concentrated on specialized sectors where it is possible to be a leader with a 10% share of the world market. The European chips industry must by necessity be global in order to play a role in a highly competitive world, Chery repeats. But it is equally important to know how to operate within an industrial ecosystem in which client companies increasingly want to work alongside semiconductor manufacturers capable of churning out customized chips, capable of characterizing the final product.
And so, alongside the need to contain prices thanks to the size of the scale, European groups are specializing as griffes capable of producing made-to-measure components, like "many prêt-à-porter stylists" except that in this case the boutique's product comes from the Internet of things. A feature that Stm has in common with other made in Italy technology spacecraft, forced to invent tailor-made solutions to defend its role. As happens with the supercomputer that Leonardo is installing in the Fiumara building in Genoa which guarantees a series of advantages.
“You don't use raw materials until you are convinced that the prototype is not functional,” he explains Robeto Cingolani Chief Technology Oficer of Leonardo. “Artificial intelligence, for example, could bring the era of vehicle maintenance coupons to an end, by predicting the right time to notify that an inspection is due. Digitizing today also means having high computing and storage power available. The complex system of an airplane is not very different from that of a city; we need a very high-powered calculation system, a place where all the information can be contained to make calculations and statistics, becoming predictive: cloud computing. This is, in summary, why the super computer in Genoa is so important”.
Another example of Italy's ability to keep the country in the platoon of advanced economies, despite many difficulties.
