China Wireless to set up R&D centre in India

The Hong Kong-based smart phone manufacturer, China Wireless Technologies Ltd, has planned to set up a research and development (R&D) centre in India by the end of this year, as part of a Rs 400-crore investment plan in this country.

It has also planned a handset manufacturing unit a few years down the line, once they manage to sell about five million units. They believe this level would be reached by 2013.

“We are in the process of setting up our operational infrastructure in India. We plan to have 300 employees and sell around one million units by 2011. By the end of 2010, we will be launching 15 handset models in India,” said Sami Al-Lawati, managing director, Coolpad Communications Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Coolpad Overseas, in turn a subsidiary of China Wireless.

He told reporters the proposed R&D centre would have 500 people. The proposed handset manufacturing unit is intended to serve its global market.

The CDMA telephony market in India is around 120 million subscribers; in China, it is 50 million. India is an important market for the company. India CDMA telephony operators are providing basic handsets to their customers and there is good potential for middle and high-end handsets, which Coolpad will focus on. Al-Lawati noted around 30 percent of CDMA subscribers use smart phones. Coolpad is planning to launch dual mode (CDMA and GSM) at the high-end bracket.

The target, he said, was to sell five million handsets in India by 2013. The company would follow a two-pronged strategy to drive handset sales – targeting both CDMA telephony players who can offer their services bundled with the handsets and also independent retail sales.

Presently, China Wireless has a 12-million unit per annum plant in China and derives 95 percent of its revenues from that market.

Tying up exclusively with Reliance Webstore Ltd, the handset company has launched the country’s cheapest touch screen CDMA phone, S100, at less than Rs 4,500 in India.