Telecom99: Siemens aims for mobile resurrection

Siemens has revealed ambitious plans to capture a larger share of the global mobile phone handset market, which is dominated by rival Europeans Nokia and Ericsson and US vendor Motorola.

Speaking at Telecom 99, Volker Jung, member of the managing board at Siemens, said the German company wants to capture at least 10 per cent of the mobile market by 2001, equivalent to 35 million units, based on current forecasts.

Siemens' performance in the mobile handset market had until last year been dwindling in the face of stiff competition, especially from Nokia and Ericsson. The launch of its C25 and S25 handsets, with innovative features including ring tones remixed by DJs, has brought Siemens back into contention, according to Jung.

"We have achieved no less than a turnaround in our mobile phone business. In fiscal year 1998/99 we sold 12 million mobile phones - mainly the C25 and S25," he said.

But Siemens' sales remain only a small fraction of the estimated 250 million mobile handsets Nokia claims have been shipped by all vendors this year.

There are around 400 million mobile phone subscribers and the number is forecast to rise to 900 million by 2003, according to figures published this week by the International Telecommunication Union.

New mobile phone products expected from Siemens next year include next generation mobile phones equipped with wireless application technology (Wap) for mobile Internet services, and high speed general packet radio system (GPRS) technology.

Siemens is already working on third generation UMTS phones, expected to be available after 2001. The company is demonstrating prototypes of UMTS phones in the UK, including a disc-shaped mobile videophone.

"With the planned commercial market debut of UMTS in Europe and Asia in early 2001, our goal is to offer, in little over a year, attractive multimedia products which are appropriate for the market," said Jung.

"These devices will not only dominate UMTS air interfaces, they will also work in GSM and GPRS mode in order to provide customers with normal national availability as well as international roaming," he added.