Thaindian News

Chennai, May 25 (IANS) Hong Kong-based smart phone manufacturer China Wireless Technologies Ltd will be starting a research and development (R&D) centre in India by the end of this year and is also mulling setting up a handset plant, a company official said Tuesday.
“In India, we are planning a 500-people research and development (R&D) centre involving an outlay of Rs.400 crore. We will start our work in that connection by the end of this year,” Sami Al-Lawati, the managing director of Coolpad Communications Pvt Ltd, told reporters here.

Coolpad Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong based Coolpad Overseas which in turn is a subsidiary of China Wireless, he said.

According to al-Lawati, China Wireless is also keen to have a handset manufacturing plant in India for its global market once the group achieves five million unit sales in the country.

“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,” he said.

He hopes the group would touch the target of five million handset sales in India by 2013.

At present, China Wireless has a 12 million units per annum plant in China and derives 95 percent of its revenues from that market.

“The Indian plant will be for our global markets. The CDMA telephony market in India is around 120 million subscribers whereas in China it is 50 million. India is an important market for us,” he added.

According to al-Lawati, the India CDMA telephony operators are providing basic handsets to their customers and there is a good potential for middle- and high-end handsets which is what Coolpad is focussing on.

“Nearly 30 percent of the CDMA subscribers use smart phones,” he remarked.

Coolpad will also launch dual mode (CDMA and GSM-global system for mobile communication) at the high-end bracket.

In India, the company will be following a two-pronged strategy to drive its handset sales - targeting CDMA telephony players who can offer their services bundled with the handsets and also independent retail sales.

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.