BenQ to close handset R&D center in Beijing
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(InfoWorld) - BenQÂ will close a mobile phone research and development center in Beijing as it continues to slim operations. The company opted earlier this year toÂ stop investing in a German subsidiaryÂ due to rising losses. The Taiwanese company will shift work from the Beijing center to R&D labs in Suzhou, China, and Taiwan, BenQ said Monday. Closing the Beijing facility will help it reduce costs and work more efficiently, it said. Around 400 workers in Beijing will be affected by the closure, but some of them are expected to relocate to Suzhou. The closure shows BenQ is still trying to recover from its push to become a global handset player via BenQ Mobile, the mobile phone operation itÂ took over from SiemensÂ last year. The operation was such a burden to Siemens that it paid BenQ â¬250 million ($327.1 million) to take it over. It proved too difficult for BenQ to turn around, despite strong intellectual property and a solid brand name in Europe. The decision to step away from the business cost BenQ dearly, and the company still faces financial troubles from the move.Â BenQ lost NT$12.22 billionÂ (US$375.1 million) in the third quarter of this year, mainly due to inventory and impairment charges related to BenQ Mobile. It was BenQ's fourth straight quarterly loss. In all, the Taiwanese company reckons it lost over US$1 billion in its mobile phone operations over the past year. Analysts roundly blamed stiff competition in the mobile handset business for BenQ's troubles. NokiaÂ and MotorolaÂ have been taking market share away from most of their rivals in the handset business this year.
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Warburg Pincus, Providence Equity close to acquiring former part of AT&amp;T Bell Labs, report says. NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Two investment firms are about to close a deal to acquire telecommunications software company Telcordia Technologies Inc.
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Research in Motion has received clearance to sell its popular BlackBerry device in China after eight years of trying. The Canadian-based company says it's finalizing the delivery of its products there.
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Research in Motion has received clearance to sell its BlackBerry device in China after eight years of trying.
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(InfoWorld) - BenQ Mobile plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Germany after its Taiwanese parent decided to stop investing in the money-losing operation, the mobile phone maker said Thursday. Taiwan's BenQ Corp., which will continue to develop and market BenQ-Siemens brand mobile phones, said it made the decision because it saw no end to the losses after already sinking over â¬600 million ($761.7 million) into the unit. "We made this painful decision after losses continued to pile up despite our best efforts," said K.Y. Lee, chairman of BenQ, at a news conference in Taipei. BenQ said the bankruptcy filing should not affect customers since the parent company will continue to develop, manufacture, and sell BenQ-Siemens handsets from Asia. The decision comes almost a year after BenQÂ took over the mobile phone businessÂ from Siemens, and leaves the fate of 3,000 German workers at BenQ Mobile in doubt. It also highlights the difficulty of turning around a sinking business. Under Siemens, the handset division had been losing market share. The German company even paid BenQ â¬250 million to take the ailing division off its hands. BenQ has posted losses for the three financial quarters that have passed since it acquired BenQ Mobile. Analysts have blamed stiff competition in the mobile phone industry for the troubles many handset makers have faced this year. Industry leaders Nokia and Motorola have both gained market share this year, mainly at the expense of smaller rivals, according to market researcher Gartner. BenQ's share of the handset market dropped to 3.2 percent in the second quarter, from 4.8 percent the same time last year, according to Gartner. Meanwhile, Nokia's share rose to 33.6 percent from 31.6 percent, and Motorola's increased to 21.9 percent from 17.7 percent. If BenQ Mobile can return to financial health as it restructures under the protection of the German government, it could return to the BenQ family of companies, BenQ said. BenQ Mobile's headquarters in Munich, as well as sites in Kamp-Lintfort and Bocholt in North-Rhine-Westphalia will be directly affected by the decision, while operations in Brazil will undergo a financial review. The Taiwanese company had already taken several steps to reduce costs and turn BenQ Mobile around, includingÂ laying offÂ over 500 workers earlier this year in Germany, and announcing a plan toÂ shut down mobile phone productionÂ in Taiwan. The company also announced several measures intended to streamline its operations, including a plan toÂ spin offÂ its non-handset manufacturing business.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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(InfoWorld) - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications A.B. is setting up a research and development (R&D) unit for mobile phones in Chennai in south India. The handset maker announced earlier this year that it was outsourcing its manufacturing to the Chennai operations of Flextronics Corp. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., which uses the brand name Foxconn. By having R&D teams in India, the company will be better able to tap into consumer behavior in local markets, Sony Ericsson said Wednesday. A number of mobile phone vendors are setting up manufacturing, R&D centers, and network operating centers in India, both to take advantage of Indiaâs low-cost labor, and also to target Indiaâs booming mobile phone market. India added 6.57 million mobile telephony subscribers in May this year, taking the total number of subscribers to 178 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi. This mobile telephony boom has translated into heavy demand for mobile phones. Over 62 million handsets have been sold in India in the last 12 months, according to internal estimates by Sony Ericsson. The company is targeting production of 10 million phones from India by 2009. The new facility will become part of Sony Ericssonâs global network of R&D units, currently comprised of sites in China, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, the U.S. and the U.K. The company did not, however, provide details of staffing or the nature of the work to be done at the new R&D facility.
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The computer giant hands off its personal-computer business business to a Chinese firm
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THQ hoses down its near-term prospects.
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Chinese businessmen will soon be able to get their hands on Research In Motion&#39;s BlackBerry handset, following long months of delays getting approval to bring the devices to China.RIM is showing off the first BlackBerry handset to be available in China, the BlackBerry 8700, at the PT/Expo Comm China 2007 exhibition this week in Beijing. But getting the device into the world&#39;s largest mobile-phone market wasn&#39;t easy.In May 2006,&#160;RIM secured an agreement with China Mobile Communications, the country&#39;s largest mobile operator, to offer the BlackBerry push e-mail service starting from May of that year. But Chinese regulators did not&#160;approve the BlackBerry handsets for sale in China&#160;until the first quarter of this year, meaning BlackBerry users had to bring in handsets from outside China, said Norm Lo, RIM&#39;s vice president of Asia-Pacific, in a telephone interview.Lo declined to say exactly how many BlackBerry subscribers there currently are in China, but said the number was in the &quot;many thousands.&quot;Getting approval to sell handsets in China required RIM to team up with telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent&#160;in a distribution agreement, RIM. Alcatel-Lucent in turn tapped a handset joint venture it has with TCL Communications Holdings Co., a Chinese handset maker, to secure the necessary approvals for the 8700 to be sold in China starting later this year.Clearing this regulatory hurdle opens up more of the Chinese market, with more than 500 million mobile subscribers, and the availability of BlackBerry handsets should help attract more customers to the push e-mail service, Lo said.&#160;
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Sony Corp. will begin shuttering its  Connect Music Store in March, the company confirmed Thursday.
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Finland's Nokia, the top global mobile phone manufacturer, said Tuesday that it planned to close a factory in Germany by mid-year which employs 2,300 workers.
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Caught in a fierce competitive market populated by BlackBerries, iPhones and other innovative devices, Palm announced this weekend that it will close most of its retail stores.
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TELECOMS giant BT yesterday said it was parting company with one of the architects of its transformation from a fixed-line operator.
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3,000 jobs axed BenQ's mobile phone business - the former Siemens division BenQ took over less than a year ago for â¬250m - is facing imminent collapse.â¦
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The Blue Bell, Pa.-based company said it will close some of its facilities and reduce its employee head count.
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Electronics giant Sony says it will stop producing rear-projection televisions in February 2008.
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Taiwan's BenQ, which unsuccessfully took over Siemens' mobile phone business, has returned, but mobile phones will play a much smaller role, its executives say.