Skills Shortage, Sky-High Home Prices Arrest This Chip Designer's Penang Presence

Altera Corporation Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Altera Malaysia, Jordan S. Plofsky, discusses:

- The business of programmable logic device manufacturing;
- Difference with fixed logic devices;
- Their practical applications;
- How Altera feeds into the smartphone and tablet craze;
- Biggest clients;
- December profit warnings from semiconductor makers - weak spots - soft markets - sales performance undershooting end-market demand;
- Semiconductor company - high long-term correlation with America’s GDP;
- FT: "barring a dramatic change in fortunes, semiconductor stocks may continue to hold a mirror to a global economy that is getting uglier" - whether too draconian;
- In Penang since 1994 - reasons - challenges;
- Skills shortage - housing prices;
- Extent of R&D activities;
- Views: LGE-DAP government - openness - ease of doing business - bureaucracy - corruption - leakages.