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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Biddle who wrote (33253)	3/7/2003 6:25:04 PM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196720

Samsung may build handset plant in India SEOUL - Samsung Electronics, the world's third-largest mobile phone maker, may build a handset plant in India. straitstimes.asia1.com.sg Samsung is studying whether it needs a plant, the company said in a statement, adding that nothing has been decided. Yesterday, India's Economic Times reported that Samsung may invest as much as US$100 million (S$174.4 million) to build a plant in the western province of Gujarat, citing South Korean Consul General Chung Dong Il. The manufacturing plant will be set up in collaboration with India's Reliance Industries, the report said. Reliance Infocomm, a unit of India's largest non-state company, is using Qualcomm's code division multiple access, or CDMA technology, to provide mobile-phone services within city limits. Samsung is the largest maker of CDMA phones and equipment. Mr Bhagwan Khurana, group president at Reliance Infocomm, denied the company had entered into an agreement with Samsung. 'As of this date, we have no partnership with Samsung,' he said. In January, Samsung had said it may re-enter the market for lower-priced phones so it could sell handsets in countries such as India, which have a higher potential for growth. Reliance Infocomm is targeting seven million users for its CDMA phone service this year, Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs had said last month. Samsung climbed the ranks of cellphone makers to become the world's third-largest behind Nokia and Motorola by concentrating on selling phones to users who already have one. To encourage them to trade in their old phones, Samsung unveiled a new model every month last year and included advanced features such as high-speed Internet access. The firm expects to sell 13 million phones worldwide in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of last year, it sold 11.6 million phones. Exports accounted for 9.5 million units at an average selling price of US$185 per phone. Samsung also unveiled a plan yesterday worth more than US$800 million to buy back and cancel 2 per cent of its shares, which have lost about one-tenth of their value this year. The move, applauded by fund managers, came after shares of the world's top memory-chip maker hit a 13-month low last month, rattled by falling chip prices and a cloudy outlook for the world economy. South Korean conglomerates have traditionally been reluctant to turn over their often huge cash hoards to investors through dividend payouts or stock cancellation because doing so fails to bring in hefty capital gains to the families controlling the groups. Nonetheless, Samsung last year paid out record dividend of 912.7 billion won (S$1.37 billion) and bought back 1.5 trillion won worth of stock, the highest among South Korean firms, to return part of its record profit of 7.05 trillion won to investors. 'But there have been demands from investors that the company do more to boost share prices,' Samsung spokesman James Chung told Reuters. --Reuters,Bloomberg News