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G. Rambabu

SINGAPORE, June 18

AFTER lying low in India for a couple of years now, global telecom major Siemens Ltd proposes to aggressively push its mobile phones in India, giving its competitors such as Nokia and Samsung a run for their money.

According to Mr Peter Zapf, President of Mobile Phones within the Siemens Information and Communication Mobile Group, the company has identified the Asia-Pacific region as the most potential, in terms of mobile penetration, with India leading the pack, next only to China.

``There is a tremendous potential in the Asia-Pacific region, in particular India where the full potential remains to be tapped. While Europe and USA have more or less reached saturation points, it is the Asian countries that offer tremendous opportunities for mobile manufacturers. Although we have always been low-key in terms of pushing our products, we plan to give a big push in countries such as India, Thailand and the Philippines,'' he said.

In keeping with its global policy of slow but sustained growth in market share, he said Siemens which stood eighth in the world a few years back is now the third largest manufacturer.

"In India too, we have slowly seen our market share rising and we will continue to push for faster growth." He said that the market dynamics for all the countries were different, and therefore Siemens had decided to adopt a segmented approach in its mobile business.

The company would be unveiling its phones keeping in mind the tastes and preferences of people. Something which no other company has done. Until now all the manufacturers have been typically selling the same handset all over the globe.

But Siemens intends to have tailor-made products for each region. Mr Zapf also noted that for mobile penetration to increase in India, the Government needed to extend a helping hand to all manufacturers by cutting down customs duties, which would put an end to the grey market. This would really help the `genuine' mobile market to grow.

Regarding plans to set up a manufacturing unit in India for mobile handsets, Mr Zapf said that the level of subscriber base did not justify this at present.

The taxation structure in the country also did not encourage manufacturers to set up units. The company, he noted, had a manufacturing unit at Shanghai, which was set up because of the economies of scales that it provides and the support given by the Government.

``However in India, the situation is different. It does not provide economies of scale. Moreover, the Shanghai unit has enough capacity to cater to the whole Asia-Pacific region. So as of now, we have no plans to set up a manufacturing unit in India,'' he said.

He also reiterated that Siemens would continue to concentrate on GSM phones and had no plans of manufacturing CDMA handsets. In GSM, the company would continue to offer the latest products, which would make it compatible to the latest technology platforms, offering the latest features.

In this context he noted that Siemens had launched three handsets at CommunicAsia 2002, which were the most up-to-date in terms of technology. In particular, its first mobile phone that records and plays polyphonic and social sounds — C55.

``The C55 offers consumers the unique opportunity to not only play and download polyphonic ring tones but to record their favourite sounds. With advanced messaging services, access to unlimited entertainment applications over Wireless Java and a wide range of CLIPit covers in different designs, including an innovative luminescent material, Siemens' C55 lets users express their personal style with content and colour,'' he said.

He noted that consumers could access a broad spectrum of original applications and games at Siemens' consumer mobile portal wap.my-siemens.com/c55, and download their favourites via Java, over GPRS (class 8) and a WAP 1.2.1 browser.

As regards the company's preparedness for 3G, he pointed out that it had already prepared itself to face the challenges from other competitors. In this context, he noted that the company had reached an understanding with Motorola for joint development of 3G-enabled handsets.

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