Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) and Huawei Technologies have formed a joint venture company to develop, manufacture and market TD-SCDMA technology. The companies are investing a combined US$100 million in the new venture, which will be based in Beijing. Siemens mobile will hold 51% in the new company and Huawei will hold 49%.
TD-SCDMA, which complements GSM and W-CDMA, is currently being put to the test in several trial networks. The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry allocated a 155 MHz spectrum to TD-SCDMA in October 2002, thus paving the way for the commercial use of the standard in China. Both partners in the joint venture hope that TD-SCDMA will succeed in the Chinese market and convince operators in other countries to adopt the standard. Manufacturing and marketing of the standard will, however, initially be focused on China. The technology can be operated either as a standalone network or used to supplement GSM or UMTS networks in order to cope with heavy data traffic. The aim is to offer the first products of the joint venture in the coming months and to participate in the official 3G trials with operators set up under the governance of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) within this year. http://www.siemens-mobile.com/tdscdmahttp://www.tdscdma-forum.org
- In November 2003, 3Com and Huawei Technologies secured the final approvals from the Chinese government to begin operations at their joint venture company. The new Huawei-3Com Co. Ltd. will sell enterprise networking solutions including routers and LAN switches. 3Com has the rights to market and support the Huawei-3Com products under the 3Com brand in all countries except China and Japan. In China and Japan, Huawei-3Com will sell products sourced internally as well as from 3Com.
The new company is composed of enterprise networking business assets, including LAN switches and routers, engineering and sales/marketing resources and personnel, and licenses to its related intellectual property. 3Com is contributing $160 million in cash, assets related to its operations in China and Japan, and licenses to certain intellectual property. In two years, 3Com has the right to acquire a majority ownership interest in Huawei-3Com. The new Huawei-3Com is domiciled in Hong Kong, with principal operations in Hangzhou, China, and sales offices throughout China and Japan. The company has approximately 1,500 employees based in China and derived primarily from Huawei.
