China's electronics manufacturing sees positive outlook towards 2005 and beyond
Representatives from foreign electronics manufacturers expressed that the outlook for China's electronics manufacturing industry is very positive for the next few years, and that China is also increasing its input in product R&D for the Asia Pacific region.
George Yang and Yang Fuyan, both senior executives with Siemens Dematic told Interfax that in China most local (electronics) firms are currently moving from low-end towards middle and high-end manufacturing. Siemens Dematic already provides around 3,000 SMT (Surface Mount Technology) machines to Chinese firms such as Haier, Konka, TCL, Bird, ZTE, Huawei, Eastcom and DBTel, as well as foreign firms such as Siemens Mobile, Motorola and Nokia. Between 2-4 SMT machines would be needed for the average mobile phone production line. According to Yang Fuyan machines come as a "manufacturing solution package," which cost in the region of USD 500,000, depending on client requirements. Siemens' SMT sales account for about 50% of the China market according to Yang, of which 95% are imported from overseas. Yang also identified a strong trend towards the increasing requirement in China for R&D investment to localize products to meet requirements for China and Asian markets.
The firm's competitors are foreign vendors such as Philips, Fuji and Panasonic. Yang revealed that firms such as Huawei and Datang are already preparing 3G handset manufacturing lines, using Siemens' SMT technologies. Yang predicted that the future trend is for smaller and smaller components, with increasing accuracy needed in the manufacturing process. With the challenge to manufacturers to produce products for technologies such as 3G and camera phones Yang said "the market is pushing us and we're leading the market We're creating smaller and smaller components."
interfax.com |
