This morning when I was reading an article about IT industry, I came across with these two words. I think these words were very recently coined and many people started to use.
A foundry is an industrial plant for producing certain kinds of product. The term originally referred to a metal works where metal casting operations are performed but has been extended by association to various other kinds of large scale i.e. semiconductor fabrication plant, where semiconductors are made based upon designs of other companies. Hence fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry.
I think they are acceptable alternative words for ' OEM' and ' original technology ', particularly in the microelectronics industry.
