21st century vision attracts hi-tech giants
WITH STATE-OF-THE-ART COMMUNICATIONS AND EXCEPTIONAL HUMAN RESOURCES, IT IS NO SURPRISE THAT GIANTS SUCH AS TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, SUN, AND ORACLE HAVE CHOSEN THE PHILIPPINES AS THEIR REGIONAL HQ

Norberto A. Viera President and Managing Director of Texas Instruments Philippines

Despite all the jockeying among Southeast Asian nations to attract top Information Technology companies, at the end of the day what really counts is who manages to bring in the big names in the industry and who has to make do with the sector’s lesser-known competitors. Any nation in the region would be more than thrilled to have just one of the giants like Texas Instruments, Oracle or Sun Microsystems set up on their home turf. Unfortunately for them, however, all three have chosen the Philippines.
While Texas Instruments does have plants scattered around the region, its installations in the Philippines have become the Dallas-based multinational’s most sophisticated assembly and test facilities for products that serve the needs of electronics equipment manufacturers in the United States, Asia, Europe and Japan.
“Since Texas Instruments Philippines is an assembly and test site, we are often compared to our assembly plants in Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan,” explains Norberto A. Viera, president and managing director of Texas Instruments Philippines.

“In terms of employees, we have fewer than our factory in Malaysia, about the same as Taiwan and more than the one in Japan,” he adds. “In terms of volume, we are second to Malaysia because we measure our output in terms of pins per unit. As far as revenue goes, we are the biggest among the four sites. The reason for that is the value of the products that we assemble here,” says Mr. Viera, the first Filipino to head the company, who was also named as president in April of the powerful SEIPI association (Semiconductor and Electronics Industry in the Philippines Inc.).

The Philippine-assembled devices are used worldwide for specialized consumer and industrial products in the areas of audio, speech processing, multimedia, modems, digital signal processing solutions, decoding, notebook computers, automotive electronic controls, graphics and asynchronous transfer mode data encryption.
Since taking the decision to set up in the Philippines 21 years ago, Texas Instruments Philippines has grown to become the country’s top exporter, with a cumulative value of some $11.2 billion since 1980. Export value for the year 2000 was $2.1 billion.

Among the awards the firm has won over the years are the People Development and Management Award in 1992, ISO Certification, and the 1995 Award for Total Productive Maintenance Excellence, which is the top prize given by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance. Texas Instruments Philippines was one of the first companies outside of Japan to receive that distinguished award.

CYNTHIA ROMERO MAMON President of Sun Microsystems Philippines

Sun Microsystems has shown even more confidence in the Philippines’ high-tech industry, as it chose the country as the site of its first ever joint venture in 1999 with the Philippine Systems Products Inc. (PSPI) to form Sun Microsystems Philippines. The courtship began about a decade earlier when PSPI acted as the authorized business partner of Sun Microsystems. For years the company was struggling, and then in 1992 Cynthia Romero Mamon came on board and turned the company around. In the span of three months, she moved up from head of marketing to executive vice president and then finally president.
“At the time we couldn’t even meet a $1 million quota. That was in 1992. A year later we brought in $2.3 million, and that started turning around the company,” Ms. Romero recalls.

Bernard Yu Managing Director of Oracle Systems Philippines

SunPhil, as it is commonly referred to, also does good business with another giant in the industry, Oracle, which as a business service provider is at the core of IT development in the country.
“We have been doing business in the Philippines for 10 years, and right now we have a dominant position in the local market, anywhere from 60% to 70% of the market share on the database,” notes Oracle Systems Philippines managing director Bernard Yu.
He can also boast another first for Oracle: while the company worldwide has captured some 5% of the software market, Oracle Systems Philippines has a whopping 20% to 25% market share.