Siemens market expansion to focus on China and US
biz.thestar.com.my
By THEAN LEE CHENG in Singapore
Thursday, June 20, 2002
SIEMENS AG will concentrate on China and the US to expand its market.
Its president for mobile phones division Peter Zapf said the company currently held the number 2 position in Europe and third place in China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
“Just a couple of years ago, we were number 8. Last year, we were among the top 3 in terms of mobile phone sales globally. The move to the US would help us gain better position in the global market, not to mention our strategic market in China.
“Coupled with that is our strategy of innovation where we will introduce new phones with better value-added services every two to three months. This strategy will help us gain market share,” Zapf told reporters after launching three models – the CL50, C55 and A50 – in Singapore. The new phones would be retailed in the region by the fourth quarter of this year.
Siemens stocks started trading on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year. Its quotation across the Atlantic is expected to boost its market share and position in the US market, Motorola’s home turf.
Besides its strategy of innovation, Zapf said its focus on the US and China markets would call for a “think global, act local” move.
“The US market is exciting. We will have to tailor-make products for that market and in the Asia Pacific region,” he said.
Another strategy would be to leverage on its various partnerships. It has friendly agreements with both Motorola and Nokia. The Siemens-Nokia framework agreement would result in both companies sharing research and information based on platforms.
“This would help us to go for new mobile services and enable the market to grow and at the same time, to build a new community of applications,” said Zaph.
He said mobile phone applications would largely move into three areas – voice-centric, data-centric and fun-centric. There would be a lot of different development in terms of features and technology, said Zaph.
On the “replacement market” where 77% of total global phone unit sales by 2005 would come from consumers replacing older phones, he said there would come a time where consumers would have two or three phones in order to make use of the various applications available.
“This will happen in some countries, so it makes sense to not just concentrate on voice,” Zaph said.
Short messaging system (SMS) has been very popular in the Philippines and other Asian countries. A variant of that application is Multimedia Messaging System(MMS) where a mobile phone user can see the person he is talking to with the help of a display feature on the phone screen.
The move, Zapf said, was towards MMS and Siemens would launch a colour display phone and other third generation (3G) phones later in the year.
“Technology is moving at a tremendous speed today,” he said, and Siemens would meet the demands of consumers hungry for innovative new technologies.
Zaph said: “We are on track with our 3G phones. General Packet Radio Services (GPRS) network technology was an excellent idea. It will give a lot of opportunities to prepare the market for 3G. However, consumers must know how GPRS would benefit them.
“We at Siemens are challenging the technology talk. Instead, we are trying to break down all this (techno-talk) to help consumers understand how they would benefit.”
GPRS have not been well received in Thailand and the Philippines. A Siemens official said the Philippines provided free GPRS about a year ago but there were few takers. One of Thailand’s two larger telcos Advance Wireless Marketing Co Ltd said GPRS had not been as popular as earlier expected.
“We opened a service centre but no one complains about GPRS. That’s because no one is using it,” said Advance Wireless service manager Sutas Kleepsaeng. The company has about 8 million subscribers in a population of over 70 million. |
