西門子和明碁手機明天6/7"2005要結為親家了
BenQ in Siemens joint venture
By Bettina Wassener in Frankfurt and Joachim Dreykluft and,Kristina Spiller in Hamburg
Published: June 6 2005 03:00 | Last updated: June 6 2005 03:00
BenQ, a leading Taiwanese technology group, is to become a joint venture partner in the loss-making mobile handsets arm of Siemens, according to people close to the German engineering and technology giant.
The supervisory board of Siemens will hold a telephone conference today to approve the deal with an announcement possible as early as tomorrow.
The announcement will end months of uncertainty over the the future of Siemens' handset division which has been damaging to sales. For BenQ, Taiwan's largest maker of mobile phones, it will provide a springboard into the European market, where its sales are limited.
Siemens' mobile handsets business has long been one of the group's main problem areas, ratcheting up losses of more than €500m during the year to end-March and losing market share amid competition from rivals such as Nokia.
Siemens has for months been on the lookout for a buyer or partners. Speculation has centred on Asian companies, for whom a link-up with Siemens would provide an attractive way to gain or step up their presence in the European market.
In April Siemens announced it would carve out the handsets business, along with its much more attractive cordless phones unit, into a separate legal entity.
That move was designed to ease progress, and Klaus Kleinfeld, the chief executive, said that he was "positive" a solution involving one or more partners would be found before too long. In April the group signalled it would consider taking a minority stake in any joint venture, rather than the 50:50 arrangements it has in computers and household goods, highlighting how troublesome the handsets unit is.
Siemens yesterday confirmed that the supervisory board would discuss the mobile devices business today, well ahead of its next scheduled meeting at the end of July.
For all its faults - its products lack fashion status and the handsets unit lacks scale and has been slow in bringing new products to market - the Siemens technology and brand name are bonuses.
But Siemens' long-running efforts to find a buyer or partners have been hampered by the unit's persistently poor performance.
Efforts to fix it have yielded few improvements; the unit lost another €138m during the quarter to end March as unit sales slumped to 9.3m from 12.8m a year earlier.
Average selling prices, although being up slightly from the previous quarter, remain low at €90.
Research group Gartner last month said Siemens' share of the global mobile handsets market had dropped to 5.5 per cent during the first quarter of this year, the lowest level since 1999.
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