LG Establishes Beach-Head in Europe
December 13, 2004 - source: BWCS
In a bid to further its ambition to become one of the top three mobile handset sellers in the world by 2006, Korean mobile vendor LG Electronics has established a new R&D centre in Paris. The company wants to underline the importance of the European markets to its GSM and W-CDMA operations. It is also a clear attempt to strengthen the company's ties with European heavyweights Orange, Vodafone, Telefonica and T-Mobile amongst others.
LG's European president, James Kim, described the new centre as vital for creating "an environment in which we can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position our research center as the R&D hub penetrating European mobile phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than 100-plus people next year."
Overall LG is pushing to increase its R&D staff to over 5,000 by 2006, 30% of whom will be recruited from outside Korea. The company also operates R&D centres in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore, and Moscow.
The opening of the research centre comes just days after research group Canalys had reported that LG Electronics is dominating the early stages of the race to sell 3G handsets in the EMEA zone. According to the researchers' figures, 55% of all next generation mobiles sold during the third quarter of this year in European, Middle Eastern and African markets were made by LG Electronics.
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