LG in India-specific plan

[Chirag 5]

LG in India-specific plan

BUSINESS STANDARD :: Our Corporate Bureau in Mumbai

Published : January 15, 2004

LG Electronics Inc (LGE), a $16 billion electronics and telecommunication conglomerate, plans to leverage facilities of its group company LG Soft India to design and feature applications and software which are specific to Indian needs on its code division multiple access (CDMA) handsets.

LG Electronics has tied-up with Reliance Infocomm to provide CDMA technology-based mobile handsets in the country.

It has also provided a “limited number of mobile handsets” to Tata Teleservices for the latter’s foray into the mobile telephony.

Speaking to Business Standard, Tom K Baek, country head - CDMA terminals, LG Electronics, said, “LG Soft India will expand its R&D activities at Bangalore to develop software for mobile phones which are customer specific. By developing software applications in India, the response time to apply them will be quick.”

LG Soft India (LGSI), is promoted by the third largest Korea conglomerate, the LG group, with equity participation from AIG. It has two offshore development centres in India and offices in San Jose, London and in Seoul. At Bangalore, LG Soft is planning to more than double its manpower from 300.

Research has helped LG to launch LG RD 2130, a moonlight phone which is bilingual, capable of sending short messaging services in English and Hindi.

KK Kushwaha, vice-president - CDMA terminals, LG Electronics, said, “LG intends to continue being a market leader in the CDMA handsets market in India. We already enjoy more than 50 per cent market share within two years of starting operations here.”

Including the LG RD 2130 handset, LG has three models for the telecom service provider Reliance Infocomm and one model for Tata Teleservices. Baek pointed out that the company has lined-up several models from the LG stable for the market here in the first half of 2004.

In the CDMA global market, LGE supplied a total of six million mobile phones, recording a 23 per cent market share. It outperformed other players such as Samsung Electronics and Motorola which supplied 5.1 million units, covering nearly 19.6 per cent market share.