Motorola to enhance R&D set-up in India

Motorola, the $31 billion mobile devices major, is further enhancing its research and development efforts out of India.

The firm which has close to 2,500 professionals in the software engineering and R&D domain has announced that it will hire another 1,000 developers in India by end of the next year.

The global major has so far invested close to $85 million in India and expects to funnel a further 10-15 per cent increase.

Edward J Zander, chairman and CEO, Motorola who is on a visit to India said in Bangalore on Tuesday: "We established our R&D facility at Bangalore in 1991 and today we have the largest, most versatile and fastest growing R&D presence in the country among all telecom MNCs. Out of every phone that comes to the marketplace from Motorola, 40 per cent of the software is from India. This is the kind of importance India plays in our global framework and we are committed to this geography."

Motorola also outsources 20 per cent of its global software development work to vendors like TCS and Satyam and currently close to 1,100 developers from third party vendors in India are working on Motorola projects. "We anticipate that even this outsourcing will continue to grow," Zander added.

Zander, who is responsible for bringing Motorola back on its tracks of innovating new mobile devices, a thing which it is was famous for, said there are endless possibilities in extending what a mobile device can deliver.

"Seamless mobility is the goal we are after. We are taking internet to a mobile device with all security issues and India is major driver in our efforts," he said.

In addition to tapping local talent, Zander said Motorola will look into the handset assembling option in the near future. "For us to manufacture here in India, we need volumes and we are getting there in gaining marketshare. As we get good volumes, we might look at this option at a later stage," he said.

Added Amit Sharma, VP, Regional Management, South and South East Asia, Motorola: "Our focus, besides building volumes in the handset business, is to go after the managing of telecom networks here. We are in active convesation with two mobile service providers and lets see how that pans out."

Sharma added that Motorola has $7 billion in cash and this will be used for acquisitions and there are two targets which they have identified in India.