Siemens China Witnesses Rapid GrowthThe information and communication branch of Siemens China attained strong growth in the local telecom market in the 2000 financial year, say company officials, highlighted by its new status as the third largest mobile phone vendor in the country."Despite the fiercer competition from both foreign and local partners, the past financial year marks a greater performance for our telecom business in China," said Juergen Lagleder, vice-president of Siemens China. "We have made records in some business sectors and will reach more in the coming years," Lagleder said. Local market research shows that Siemens has replaced Ericsson as the third biggest handset seller after Nokia and Motorola since September. It's the first time Siemens has ranked among the top three although the company has sold mobile phones in China for quite a few years. Siemens roughly sold more than 3 million mobile phones in the country over the last financial year, according to a company report. Beijing International Switch Corp, a joint venture of Siemens, has surpassed 40 million lines of digital switch sales over the past decade. Yu Xiangguo, general manager of 3G (Third Generation) Network with Siemens China, said with the co-operation of domestic institutions, breakthroughs were made in the development process of 3G telecom standards. The introduction of TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access), a 3G standard developed by Siemens and China Academy of Telecom Technologies (CATT), is expected to have a profound effect on the country's future telecommunications development. Yu said the first system test of TD-SCDMA was successfully conducted this year while the on-site test is scheduled early next year. The TD-SCDMA standard has been accepted by the International Telecom Union (ITU) as one of the five 3G standards available. In the profitable mobile system sector, Siemens has a wide penetration in the market, clinching active co-operations with all local telecom service operators, Lagleder said. The company has contracted with China Mobile and China Unicom to construct 33 GSM (global system of mobile communications) local markets. Compared with the traditional giants of Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia, Siemens represents a minor share of China's mobile system market. "We are encouraged to see our growth margin is widening quickly," Lagleder said. The vice-president said that a bigger amount of investment would be poured into the market in the coming years. The company's investment for building up a strong market position in Asia amounts to some US$1.5 billion through 2003, which would be invested in marketing, research and development and production facilities. Source: chinadaily.com.cn |
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