Analog/RF test and characterization equipment

Every semiconductor that leaves an Indian assembly line is judged fit for sale by a machine India does not make. As of 2026, the country sources 100% of its commercial analog and RF test equipment from foreign suppliers; no indigenous manufacturing capability exists.

The difficulty is real and specific. Unlike digital chips, which register a clean pass or fail, radiofrequency and analog devices demand analog, RF, and often over-the-air measurements that are inherently more time-consuming and more sensitive to variation. A tester must generate and measure high-speed RF signals, hold precision power supplies steady, run load-pull characterisation under realistic load, and do so repeatably enough to be trusted across millions of parts. Average selling prices for high-performance automated testers climbed from USD 6.8 million in 2023 to USD 7.6 million in 2025, pushed by advanced RF and femtoampere measurement capability — an indication of how far the engineering frontier has moved.

The market that has mastered this is narrow. Teradyne and Advantest together hold roughly 45–48% of the global test equipment market, and Japan's domestic champions maintain a 40% share in radiofrequency, high-power, and cryogenic testers. The United States and Japan are the two possessor nations.

India's own semiconductor build-out is accelerating around this gap. As of December 2025, ten projects worth ₹1.60 lakh crore had been approved under the India Semiconductor Mission across six states, including silicon fabs, silicon carbide fabs, advanced and memory packaging, and dedicated assembly and testing infrastructure. Every one of these facilities is being fitted out with imported test systems. India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, announced in February 2026, carries a ₹1,000 crore allocation for equipment and materials manufacturing, but does not specify RF or analog test system production.

The gap persists for structural reasons. High-performance test equipment sits on capital-intensive system development, stringent performance specifications, and a continuous calibration and certification burden. Beneath the tester lie foundational capabilities — automated test equipment architecture, high-speed RF signal generation and measurement modules, probe cards, mixed-signal test ICs, load-pull systems, and the specialised software that generates test programs. India has building blocks in adjacent domains, but not the integrated instrument.

What it would take is the assembly of those subsystems into a validated, calibrated platform that foundries and OSATs will certify. The equipment-and-materials line within ISM 2.0 is the natural vehicle. Until an indigenous tester earns that trust, India's fabs will keep buying the machines that decide whether their chips are good.