Skilling India: MediaTek Concludes Smartphone Design Training Program in Taiwan

MediaTek, a fabless semiconductor company has concluded its second Smartphone Design Training Program (SDTP) in Taiwan.

The 9-week-long training program has been created in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), India and Indian Cellular Association (ICA) to propel the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This year’s highlight was that as many as 19 key component makers across domains shared their expertise to train a batch of selective 91 candidates in India and Taiwan.

The comprehensive smartphone design training program is comprised of India and Taiwan sections. A total of 91 shortlisted candidates participated in the India section of the program from leading Indian companies including well-known smartphone brands like Lava, Micromax, Karbonn, Intex, Panasonic, Reliance, Samsung, Videocon, Smatron etc. Of these, 39 were further shortlisted and went to Taiwan for higher training.

The annual program, conducted in collaboration with MeitY, is primarily aimed at accelerating the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Skilling India’ initiatives of Government of India. Since 2016, SDTP has been nurturing talent in India’s fast-growing handset industry by sharing its smartphone expertise and knowledge with a group of handpicked senior managers and engineers from the smartphone industry in the country.

The closing ceremony of the training program this year was held at the MediaTek headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan on April 2nd, 2018. While congratulating the program participants for successfully undertaking it, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY said: “The MediaTek Smartphone Design Training Program exemplified the role companies can play in furthering the Indian government’s initiatives such as Make in India and Skilling India. Our program is focused on closing the gap for demand of smartphone design talent in the market. With such efforts, both Indian and global handset makers in India won’t have to look anywhere else for design capabilities.”

MediaTek, India Managing Director, Grant Kuo also acknowledged the Indian engineers’ enthusiasm, eagerness and willingness to participate in the second smartphone design training program. Congratulating them for having completed the certification course, Mr Kuo wished them well and hoped their contributions to the Indian smartphone design industry will only help grow India’s technology economic center. He also acknowledged MediaTek’s partners; all 19 handset component makers who helped train and share their vast knowledge to participants.

MediaTek collaborated with the smartphone global ecosystem to provide an unprecedented opportunity, where 19 key component companies came together to share knowledge of their specialized domains. These partners included AAC, Airoha, Anritsu, Goodix, Ilitek, Keysight, Knowles, Liteon, Litepoint, Murata, MXIC, Nanya, Primax, R&S, Richtek, Voltafield, Sporton, TXC and Unimicron. Encouraged by the Smartphone Design Training Program’s popularity in its first year, MediaTek introduced three new specialized training modules in 2018 for RF Design, multimedia, and system mobile, respectively.

Further, the company divided the second-year program into two parts for added convenience and schedule flexibility: week-day lecture sessions held in India for six weeks; thereafter, participants travelled to Taiwan for three weeks of hands-on and library intense training.

“It has been a wonderful experience to participate in this program. Over the past 9 weeks, I have been able to learn from and interact with experts from all sub-domains in the handset industry as a part of our training module and theory classes. This knowledge will be quite helpful in executing live projects once we rejoin the industry,” said Rohit Vaidya, Freelance Consultant.