The Hindu Business Line : Motorola to expand India operations

The company plans to build services capabilities and set up centres of excellence in India as part of the initiative. It will focus on areas such as revenue assurance, push-to-talk, content management, data compression, messaging and content-oriented applications.

Bangalore , Nov. 21

TELECOM equipment vendor Motorola Inc expects its India operations to play a key role in its new services initiative. The company, which already provides integration, deployment and support services around its hardware, aims to provide value-added infrastructural services and application services for operators through this initiative, said Mr Kannankote Srikanth, Corporate Vice-President and General Manager, Global Network Services, Motorola Inc.

Motorola plans to make significant investments for the new initiative, he said while declining to disclose figures. He also declined to divulge the company's hiring plans, but said the domain capabilities would be built up both within the company and also with its partners. Motorola, at present, has over 1,300 employees in India at its research and development centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

"We are planning to build an eco-system of partners in India," Mr Srikanth said, adding that the company was in the process of identifying various applications. It expects the services initiative to take off early next year.

The company is also in talks with several Indian IT firms for developing applications and also to offer services, said Mr Subhendu Mohanty, Director of Operations, Asia Pacific Global Telecom Solutions Sector, Motorola India. The services offerings aimed at cellular operators, who are looking at optimising their networks, would help them implement newer applications, he said.

Motorola is looking at tapping both the domestic and overseas market with its services offerings. "The Indian market is beginning to grow and there is lot of exuberance. We are coming in at a right time with these offerings," Mr Srikanth said. The segment accounts for close to 18-20 per cent of the total telecom spend. Frost & Sullivan estimates the telecom spend in India to touch $5.12 billion in 2005, up from $4.83 billion in 2003.