S57: Siemens’ Shanghai surprise

SHANGHAI, China – Siemens, the German mobile phone giant, got inspired again, unveiling before an audience of Asia-Pacific journalists at the Children’s Palace here recently what it billed as the "perfect companion for the trend-setting generation" – the S57.

The S57 launch signaled Siemens’ foray into the camera phone market and into the emerging Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), which builds up on the highly popular application, the Short Messaging Service (SMS), by adding color images and sounds to an otherwise dull text. The tri-band S57 has a detachable camera, the QuickPic ICP-500, which has an integrated flash. It will be commercially available in January.

"There’s a lot going for the telecoms industry, and Siemens is involved in all key areas of the industry," said Lothar Pauly, board member of Siemens’ Information and Communication Mobile Group (Siemens mobile).

The S57, Pauly said, represents Siemens’ strategy to address all segments of the market, in this case mobile phone users looking for rich features, sleek design and cutting-edge technology – notable Asian dictates, far different from Europeans’ penchant for handsets offering connectivity with other devices. (This explains why the S57, the Asian version of Siemens’ S55, touts no Bluetooth technology, that wireless link between enabled devices).

End-user-focused, indeed, Siemens wants to be. Stylish, feature-rich phones though typify one end of the highly segmented mobile market; the other end being what the German manufacturer calls the no-frills, "voice-centric" phones. Think about the cellphone being just a voice-and-text device.

Proof of how driven Siemens is to capture the voice-centric market pie in the Asia-Pacific is its decision to set up its global headquarters for this mobile business line in Beijing. According to Pauly, the 50-man – and growing – Beijing team will churn out voice-centric handsets not only for the Asian market but also for the Americas, Africa and even Europe. As he puts it, there’s a high demand for affordable, entry-level phones, with special local adaptations such as Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and soon, Hindi language programming for menus, displays and SMS.

With the S57 launch, the highly diversified Siemens aims to strengthen its mobile communications business in Asia, particularly in China, by far the world’s largest mobile market (predictably so, owing to its billions of people). Besides, Siemens believes that the Asian market is "increasingly influencing" mobile phone size, style and applications globally.

This explains why Siemens is scouring for trends and talent in the region. The newly opened Chinese office of its design department, designafairs S Point, comes up with ideas from the Asian market, while Siemens Mobile Acceleration taps start-ups with compelling gaming and entertainment apps for mobile networks and devices.

"Everyday, we receive good ideas for broadening our mobile communications business. People in Asia are open-minded to new technologies," Pauly said. "What we find here are well-trained employees who can support us in achieving our objectives. That’s why we’re putting our confidence in this market."

At the Pudong industrial park in Shanghai, the Siemens Shanghai Mobile Communications Ltd., with a work force of 21,000, manufactures 14 million mobile phones per year, aside from at least 80,000 base stations for mobile telephony annually. Fifty percent of its production goes to Europe, 30 percent to China and the rest to the Asia-Pacific. To date, it supplies handsets to 42 partners around the globe, including Globe Telecom and Smart Communications. Siemens’ other manufacturing bases are in Germany and Brazil.

"We’ve put a great deal in place here so that we can serve our Asian customers as a dependable partner. And we’ll continue to show the flag in the future in a major market that accounts for nearly 30 percent of our total sales," Pauly said.