CHINA the next frontier. It all ties in to space and the Urbanization, of China. As Carl Sagan would say Billions and Billions of people or about 1.2 billion.
By Scott Hillis
Reuters
BEIJING, (Feb 23) - U.S.-based computer giant IBM Corp expects radical reforms of China's state-owned and financial sectors will boost its sales there despite regional economic woes, company officials said on Monday.
The shakeup of China's ailing state firms endorsed by Beijing last September would spur demand for information technology (IT) such as networking software and links to the Internet, said Henry Chow, chairman of IBM Greater China Group.
''Companies will embark on building their own intranets whereby employees in those agencies can collaborate, share information and improve productivity and efficiency,'' Chow told reporters.
''The pie will get much, much bigger and everybody in the IT industry will get a chance, but we are positioning ourselves, I hope, to get a major portion of this pie,'' Chow said.
IBM was keenly watching Asia's recent economic turmoil but believed that relatively low spending by Chinese companies on information technology meant there was still a lot of room for growth, Chow said.
''It is too early for us to worry because I think there is some inherent pent-up demand in the area of information technology,'' he said.
IBM is already cashing in on Beijing's policy to leapfrog into the information age.
China's four state-owned commercial banks, with 150,000 branches and millions of employees, are some of IBM's biggest clients.
Reforms to modernize China's banking sector and a proposal to replace several ministries with giant holding companies would create opportunities for IBM to push its strategy of ''e-business,'' or electronic commerce and networking.
''The financial reform the People's Bank of China is pushing will be positive to a solution provider like us,'' Chow said.
Another customer is the Ministry of Railways, a sprawling organization with 3.5 million employees.
IBM is helping the ministry to computerize and upgrade its system that oversees the thousands of trains that criss-cross the country and haul nearly two billion passengers a year, Chow said.
The computer giant has invested $150 million in several ventures making computers and parts. Last week it announced a new $20 million project in the southern city of Shenzhen to make components for hard disk drives.
Sales revenue in China grew by nearly 50 percent last year, outpacing the industry as a whole by at least 15 percentage points, Chow said. He declined to give an absolute figure for sales.
''Profits met corporate expectations,'' Chow said. ''We want to continue to have very strong growth in China.''
--------------------
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<HEAD> |
