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Investment of US$ 30 million - Siemens striving for leadership role in Chinese 3G mobile communication market - New mobile communication orders valued at US$ 144,8 million

Shanghai is going to become the second production location worldwide for W-CDMA technology from Siemens. That's why the company is investing US$ 30 million to expand the Shanghai Siemens Mobile Communication (SSMC) factory. This was announced today by Lothar Pauly, Boardmember of Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) at a press conference in Shanghai marking the tenth anniversary of SSMC.

Pauly stressed that Siemens mobile intends to assume the leadership role in the Chinese market for Third Generation (3G) mobile communication. The prerequisites for this are outstanding, he said: The company has put the first W-CDMA networks into commercial operation in Europe and is one of the top suppliers worldwide. In China, Siemens is working together with Chinese partners to develop the local 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. Pauly views two contracts to expand GSM networks valued at a total of US$ 144,8 million as strengthening Siemens mobile's good collaboration with the two Chinese mobile operators China Mobile and China Unicom.

China, the world's largest mobile communication market with 234 million mobile phone customers, is presently paying close attention to Europe, where the first W-CDMA networks from Hutchison recently went into commercial operation in England, Italy and Austria. All of these networks were supplied by Siemens mobile together with partner NEC.

Worldwide, there are already twelve W-CDMA networks up and running, seven of them from Siemens und NEC. Some one million mobile phone users are communicating over W-CDMA technology built by the partners. To date, they have signed 24 W-CDMA agreements worldwide and have supplied 20,000 base stations, making them the front-runners in this field.

And now, China is going to become the second production location for W-CDMA technology from Siemens mobile in addition to Germany. Today, the base stations are being manufactured at Siemens' German factory in Durach. Siemens mobile is therefore investing US$ 30 million to expand manufacturing capacities in Shanghai.

In addition to W-CDMA, Pauly announced, the Chinese 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, will continue to be moved forward as well. Together with Chinese partners, Siemens has been developing this mobile communication technology, which is part of the UMTS family. Siemens is the only company who is able to supply TD-SCDMA technology today.