Siemens Plans Dual-Format Digital Phones
By TWICE Staff -- TWICE, 5/15/2000
AUSTIN, Texas -- Siemens took another step toward its planned return to the U.S. wireless handset market with the creation of a San Diego R&D center that will develop wireless infrastructure and handsets for sale in North America.
The company plans to make dual-format digital phones available in the United States sometime in mid-2001, said a spokeswoman for Siemens' Information and Communications Mobile unit. The phones will include combination TDMA/CDMA models and TDMA/GSM models.
The unit was formed recently to combine the company's U.S.-based wireless infrastructure manufacturing and marketing functions, the company's cordless phone manufacturing and marketing functions, and the new 60,000-square-foot R&D facility, which will focus mainly on developing handsets, the spokeswoman said. Within 12 months, the center will employ 200 people, the spokeswoman said.
Dual-format phones such as TDMA/CDMA phones will enable Siemens to sell the same handset to more carriers to deliver economies of scale, she said. In addition, such phones will enable consumers to roam into more markets without losing such digital features as extended battery life.
Worldwide, Siemens is a major supplier of wireless GSM handsets, and for almost two years, it marketed GSM handsets in the United States. In late 1998, however, Siemens shut down its U.S. wireless handset operations, contending it wasn't profitable to sell handsets based on only one of three major U.S. wireless standards. At the time, the company tried and failed to develop CDMA handsets.
As part of its intended return to the U.S. handset business, the company in 1999 purchased a 15% ownership stake in start-up NeoPoint, the developer of a combination wireless CDMA phone/organizer with built-in Web browser.
In another development, the company said it will remain in the U.S. cordless phone market but plans to outsource production, preferably to a U.S.-based factory, to take advantage of economies of scale.
Siemens currently builds U.S.-market cordless phones, all 2.4GHz models, in a company-owned U.S. factory that manufactures no other products. The company manufactures cordless phones in Europe for sale outside the United States in factories that also manufacture other Siemens products.
"Cordless manufacturing in the U.S. is not our core competency," the spokeswoman said. "Either option [outsourcing to a U.S. factory or to Siemens factory in Europe] offers more economies of scale."
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