"3COM plans links for assault on Europe"
Wednesday March 18, 5:59 pm Eastern Time
By Neil Winton, Science and Technology Correspondent
Hanover, March 18 (Reuters) - U.S. computer network equipment maker
3COM Corp (COMS - news) said on Wednesday it plans an aggressive
move to boost its business in Europe and is seeking takeover candidates or
partners to do so.
The Santa Clara, California-based 3COM, which is also an important player
in the hand-held computer market with its Palm Pilot, wants to build on its
partnership with German technology powerhouse Siemens AG (OTC
BB:SMAWY - news; SIEG.F).
It is also working with Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson, looking at
the prospects for a competitor to Nokia (NOKSa.HE) of Finland's
Communicator 9000 product. This combines a mobile phone with fax, E-mail
and Internet connections.
''We have partnerships in Europe with other technology companies so we
would be very interested in continuing to look at opportunities to invest, to
acquire or partner with companies to build our presence in Europe and
beyond,'' said Janice Roberts, 3COM senior vice-president, marketing and
business development.
Roberts said Europe was big business already for 3COM, but the company
did not publish definitive sales figures for the region.
''I can't give you numbers, we don't break those out, but I can tell you that if
you look at our past financial numbers, look at our last quarter in December
we did $1.13 billion overall, and I would suggest that just under 40 percent of
that is European business.''
''Our partnership with Siemens; we are working on a whole new concept of
converged networking. This is basically bringing together voice, video and
data communications over one single network.''
''We will continue to grow that relationship. That will also help us to get into
PTTs where Siemens is a very strong presence.''
3COM is seeking to build on the success of its Palm Pilot hand-held
computer. This product has been a huge success in the U.S., capturing about
66 percent of the market. It currently holds about 28 percent of the European
market. ((Neil Winton +44 171 542 7975 neil@jinks.demon.co.uk
biz.yahoo.com
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