Motorola sees Southeast Asia as major growth opportunity
Zander, focus on quality.
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Southeast Asia, including Thailand, is the major business growth opportunity area for the US communications giant Motorola, the company's chairman and chief executive Ed Zander said yesterday.
"We're very excited about the prospects here," Zander said during his first time, one-day visit of Thailand, which is part of an Asian tour that ends today, to show the firm's commitment to its markets. In Thailand, Zander and his team met with the Information and Communications Technology Ministry and also Motorola's customers to see how the company could apply its expertise to assist in the country's technological development and support the services of telecom operators. Motorola Thailand's managing director Chirdsak Kukiattinun said the company wants to get more involved in state projects. Motorola's vision is to create "seamless mobility", with consumers being able to connect and enjoy digital content anytime, anywhere, regardless of the devices they are using or the networks they are on. In 2005 Motorola reported record worldwide sales of US$36.8 billion (Bt1.4 trillion), up 18 per cent on 2004. Its sales figures in Thailand went up a record 84 per cent during the same period. Zander said Motorola had built its share of the Asian market by focusing on product quality and the brand. Chongruk Sukulpakdee, country manager for mobile devices at Motorola Thailand, said the company had the second-largest share of the Kingdom's mobile-phone market. She said the company had recorded significant annual sales growth of handsets since late 2004, and the sales value and volume of handsets during the first half of this year had already reached the total for the whole of last year. The company's Razr mobile-phone models are among the most popular devices in Thailand, which has more than 30 million mobile-phone users. According to Agence France-Presse, Motorola said on Wednesday it was setting up a $100-million manufacturing facility in India to make mobile-phone handsets and telecom network equipment. According to Dow Jones, Motorola said on Monday that it planned to invest $60 million over two years to make Singapore the centre of the company's global supply chain management. Motorola, the world's second largest mobile-phone maker by shipments, also said at a press briefing that it would employ a further 200 people in Singapore by the end of 2007. The company, which employs about 2,500 people in Singapore, bases several of its supply chain management functions in the city-state. Sirivish Toomgum The Nation
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