A fabless company designs hardware to be implemented on Integrated circuit. But it will not have fab(semiconductor foundry- manufacturing plant for ICs) to manufacture the IC, it will outsource it.

A fab-lite company have their fab one their own, but still they outsource for some ICs to provide diversified product line. Some consider it's a way to become fabless by slowly getting ride of existing fabs. This strategy came up because executives are no longer willing to take the risk (financial) associated with fab building. Big companies like Atmel, TI, and NXP have adopted this strategic. This is more prominent specially in Europe due to high operating cost.

+Chola