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Siemens to Open R&D Facility
Siemens is to pour US$1 billion into China over the next three years to strengthen its research and development (R&D) capability, mainly targeting next-generation mobile phone business, said company officials Sunday.
The move underscores the German-based telecom equipment maker's bid to become a major player in China's mobile phone market, which is expected to grow into the world's largest in five years.
Siemens said it plans to unveil an 800 million yuan (US$96.3 million) industrial park plan in early January in Pudong Jinqiao industrial area, Shanghai, to serve as the center for its mobile phone business.
"The park will be the R&D base for 3G (third generation) handsets in China," said Peter Borger, president of Siemens Shanghai Mobile Communications Ltd.
Borger, the mastermind behind the company's Chinese mobile phone business, said the country will become the most important stepping stone in making Siemens one of the world's three largest mobile phone producers in the next few years.
Borger said he envisions tremendous growth in the next few years, citing projections that domestic mobile users could jump to 60 million by 2005 from current 10 million.
Most of the development effort will be on 3G mobile phones, an upgrade of WAP (wireless application protocol) phones which allow high-speed Internet access to multimedia features.
Though the first version of 3G mobile phones may be up for grabs in 2002 at the earliest, global producers have been gearing up for a fierce race to gain a slice of China's 3G pie.
Siemens played a trump card over archrivals including Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola when it teamed up with national tech thinktanks to develop a 3G standard, TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) standard, which will be on trial run early next year.
TD-SCDMA, together with Europe-supported WCDMA (wideband CDMA) and US-backed CDMA2000, has been recognized as a global standard for 3G networks.
The Chinese system gained support weeks ago when more than 200 domestic telecom equipment makers, foreign investors and tech experts rallied behind the standard in a technology forum in Beijing.
"Dozens of equipment makers, rather than just two or three, have expressed their desire to manufacture handsets to run on the standard," Borger said.
The challenge remains for Siemens of whether the standard can defeat its two contenders, WCDMA and CDMA2000, to become the major standard for 3G mobile phone networks in China.
But Borger was optimistic about TD-SCDMA's future, saying that the standard fits the domestic market condition well.
The standard's trial run is scheduled to last more than half a year before it can be commercialized.
Borger said Siemens is currently working on the first mobile phone handset to run on the TD-SCDMA network.
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