BANGALORE: Union minister of communications and technology Dayanidhi Maran is hopeful that Korean companies will make India a manufacturing hub for flat screens.

"Today, flat screens are replacing most of the CRT screens for computers, televisions. My next visit will be to Korea, since the Koreans are the big players in flat screen," said Maran, who was speaking on the sidelines of the second day of the valedictory session of the ISA summit in Bangalore.

Maran made an oblique reference to Samsung as one of the companies he could approach.

During the address, Maran revealed that a Frost & Sullivan report conducted for the ISA had estimated that the Indian Semiconductor industry (SCI) was expected to grow from the current $2 billion annually to $36 billion by 2015, with a potential to create 3.6 million jobs and that the sector would contribute around 12 per cent to India's GDP.

He assured that the Central and State Governments had now become aware of the potential of the SCI and were very proactive to nurture this industry.

Maran said that his focus was now on building successes in design and software services to become an attractive location for the semiconductor and electronic equipment manufacturing industry.

Bangalore headquartered ISA or the India Semiconductor Association is an organization established in 2004, representing the Indian semiconductor industry as the name suggests, and has around 90 members from leading companies in their space. This summit is the first one being held since the formation of the ISA.