Schwarzenegger Heads to Asia to Sell Californian IT

As the self-described salesman-in-chief for California, Gov. Schwarzenegger will visit China, Japan and Korea in an effort to bring more jobs to the United States.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the Silicon Valley campus of semiconductor and mobile device maker Marvell Semiconductor Sept. 8 to announce a trade visit with stops in China, Japan and Korea.

The Republican governor will start the seven-day trip on Sept. 9 with a delegation of more than 100 California businesspeople, including Marvell co-founder Weili Dai.

As the self-described "salesman-in-chief" for his state, Schwarzenegger will visit Marvell's assembly plant and the Expo in Shanghai, among numerous other business and diplomatic stops.

"Jobs, jobs, jobs-that's what this trade mission is all about," Schwarzenegger told a packed auditorium of employees and media people on the Marvell campus. "We want to bring attention to the great resources of the state of California and the innovation that its people have, especially in the IT sector."

Schwarzenegger, whose approval ratings are suffering badly as the state tries to resolve a $19 billion budget deficit, has been out of the news spotlight lately since he is being termed out of office in 2010. Former Gov. Jerry Brown and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman are competing to replace him.

"What is the right thing to do is to go on trade missions like this, and to go and to sell our products worldwide because it will stimulate our economy, it will put people to work and it will create more revenues for our state," Schwarzenegger said after a tour of Marvell's headquarters, which occupy the former 3Com campus in Santa Clara. "So that is the creative and the better way of creating more revenues for our state."

Founded in 1995, Marvell has operations worldwide and approximately 5,000 employees, 3,000 of whom are in California. Marvell makes high-volume storage and networking switch devices along with mobile and wireless devices and other consumer products, and has international design centers in the United States, Europe, Israel, Singapore and China.

Marvell supplied the WiFi chip for the original Apple iPhone. Schwarzenegger tested one of Marvell's new tablet computers during his visit.

Also during Schwarzenegger's visit, Marvell announced the launch of its Smart-Electronics Initiative, a cross-industry collaborative campaign aiming to increase awareness of the growing amount of energy consumed by everyday consumer electronics.

The initiative will also promote wider adoption of energy-efficiency technologies, such as Power Factor Correction and LEDs, Marvell President and CEO Sehat Sutardja said.

"Consumer electronics have now become the biggest drain on home energy usage," Sutardja said. "There is great urgency to rearchitect the way we build our electronics."

Since he took office following a recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, Schwarzenegger has been a road warrior, visiting Canada, Chile, Israel, Jordan, Hong Kong, Japan and Germany, among other nations. This week's excursion marks his 15th trip outside the country.