US electronics giant Motorola will keep its title as the biggest foreign investor in China with an accumulated investment of US$10 billion by 2005, company Chairman and President Chris Galvin announced in Beijing yesterday.
Galvin said Motorola's five-year development strategy in China can be described with three "tens": US$10 billion in annual production, US$10 billion in local purchasing and US$10 billion in accumulated investment.
Motorola will also become the single biggest tax contributor among foreign companies with an accumulated tax payment of US$5.6 billion in the next five years.
The announcement was made after the US firm held its biennial conference of board members in Beijing, the only location outside of the United States to host the conference.
The move suggests that Motorola's development focus will further turn to the Asia-Pacific market, especially China.
Motorola also announced it will make Beijing one of its major research and development (R&D) centers with an additional investment of more than US$1 billion over the next five years.
It currently operates 18 R&D houses in China which employ over 1,000 engineers.
By 2006, some 5,000 R&D and software engineers are expected to be working for Motorola in China, Galvin said.
The conference also named a new leadership team with Ed Breen taking on the duties of president and chief operating officer starting next year. Tim Chen, vice-president of Motorola, will replace P.Y. Lai as president of Motorola (China). Lai will move into the position of chairman of Motorola's China operations.
Motorola's three major production groups - mobile phones, telecoms network equipment and semi-conductors - all have excellent track records in China.
As one of the earliest foreign investors in the Chinese market, Motorola's mobile phone sector is one of the country's biggest players with over 30 percent of the market share.
The country's mobile carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom, which jointly support the largest customer base in the world of 120 million users, have both adopted Motorola's network equipment. The majority of the electronics giant's investment has been directed towards its semi-conductor products, or chips. Its Tianjin wafer fabrication plant has consumed most of Motorola's investment to date.
Motorola expects the chips, used in almost all electronic products, to fuel the company's next wave of growth.
China's telecoms market has become a haven for investment in the context of worldwide economic downturn. Global telecoms equipment vendors have all increased their investment in the country.
(China Daily November 8, 2001)
