3Com-Huawei Joint Venture Clears Hurdle
By boston.internet.com Staff
July 23, 2003
U.S. and U.K. trade officials have approved 3Com's (Quote, Company Info) request to share technologies with Huawei Technologies as part of a joint venture to be based in China.
"The 3Com-Huawei joint venture is now one major step closer to being fully operational as planned," said Mark Michael, 3Com's general counsel.
3Com, a Marlborough, Mass.-based firm with significant operations in Santa Clara, Calif., still needs the Chinese government to sign off on the deal. Huawei is China's largest telecom equipment maker.
The 3Com-Huawei partnership aims to deliver high-end data networking products to enterprise customers. The offerings will be compativle with 3Com's current product offering including its local area network switches and routers.
The deal was announced in March. Under the terms of the agreement, Huawei will be providing products including LAN switches, routers, engineering, sales/marketing resources and personnel, and licenses.
For its part, 3Com said it will pitch in $160 million in cash, assets related to its operations in China and Japan, and licenses to its related IP.
3Com will have the right to sell the partnered products under the 3Com brand everywhere in the world except China and Japan where the products will be sold under the Huawei-3Com brand.
Even if the two companies are not overlapping each other, they are both compete with San Jose, Calif.-based networking equipment giant Cisco .
Huawei was recently sued by Cisco for allegedly unlawfully copying its software. And 3Com has been battling the larger Cisco for years.
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