Alcatel Aims To Treble Gsm Mobile Phone Sales

Alcatel Alsthom on Tuesday announced a new family of GSM mobile phones and said it aimed to triple its unit sales in 1997.

Patrick Liot, vice president of Alcatels terminals division, told a news conference that the `One Touch Pro GSM phone was at 15 millimetres the flattest in the market and had an icon based navigating system, allowing the user to browse to the menu with a track-ball kind of button.

It means to mobile telecoms what Windows means to computers, he told a news conference on the eve of the GSM World Congress in this Mediterranean resort.

He said that while Alcatel sold one million GSM sets, made at its Laval plant in France, it aimed to sell three million terminals in 1997. This will give us a market share of 12 per cent, an increase of five points, he said.In 1996, Alcatel had a world GSM market share of six per cent and in Europe its share was eight per cent, Liot said basing himself on Dataquest figures.

 

Alain Bravo, chairman of the mobile communication division, said that in infrastructure, Alcatel had a market share in GSM/DCS of 12 per cent at the end of 1996 and aimed to grow it by two points every year.

My goal is very simple. In the year 2000 I want to have 20 per cent of the market, he said.

Alcatel currently ranks fourth in the digital mobile telecoms market, after Motorola Inc, AB LM Ericsson and Nokia Oy. We aim to be in the top three, Bravo said.

Alcatel said it was going to focus on offering value added services to GSM operators. An operator wants to get a higher return on investment and a user wants to have services that go beyond basic telephony, Bravo said. An example of such a value added service was a pact in Britain between Cellway and Barclays Bank Plc, offering mobile phones with a special button to contact a bank branch.

But future services will be more sophisticated and Alcatel plans to roll out a number of these services in the coming year. An example of this is a deal with private US company Unwired Planet in which the Redwood Shores, CA, located firm will provide its UP.Browser client applications on GSM phones.