Gasgoo Munich- On March 31, onsemi unveiled a revamped China strategy aimed at tightening its operational focus and expanding its footprint in the world’s largest semiconductor market. The plan centers on strengthening regional leadership, scaling up manufacturing partnerships, and deepening local collaboration to better support customers pursuing global growth.
Image source: onsemi
As part of the initiative, the company will establish its Greater China headquarters in Shanghai and appoint a China president, moves designed to accelerate decision-making on the ground and enhance engagement with key stakeholders across the ecosystem.
Chief Executive Officer Hassane El-Khoury framed the strategy as a shift toward deeper partnership with Chinese customers, emphasizing that demand in the market increasingly extends beyond components to full-scale collaborative innovation. He noted that the company aims to co-develop solutions locally and scale them globally, aligning execution more closely with customer needs.
The incoming China head will also oversee system engineering operations in the region, combining technical leadership with executive authority. This dual role is intended to accelerate system-level innovation while strengthening coordination with industry partners. Shanghai, as the new regional headquarters, is set to function as a central hub for cross-functional alignment, faster execution, and ecosystem engagement.
To operationalize the strategy, onsemi has outlined four pillars: local design, local manufacturing, deep market integration, and global expansion. On the R&D front, the company is expanding its Shanghai-based engineering and system design teams, working closely with domestic customers to co-develop products tailored to automotive, industrial, and AI data center applications. It has already set up eight joint application labs in China and plans to add three more, with a particular focus on localized power solutions for AI workloads.
In manufacturing, onsemi is pursuing a more integrated model by combining its in-house capabilities with local partner resources to create a seamless front-end and back-end production chain. This “engineering-to-manufacturing” feedback loop is expected to improve development speed, operational efficiency, and scalability. A key element of this approach is its collaboration with Innoscience, which will focus on advancing the global commercialization of gallium nitride (GaN) technologies.
The broader objective is to embed more deeply within China’s innovation ecosystem while using the market as a springboard for global expansion. The company plans to strengthen local sourcing and long-term value creation with partners, while leveraging its global manufacturing network to bring China-proven technologies to international markets. In doing so, onsemi aims to help customers translate domestic success into scalable global growth.
