Siemens AG, the world's No. 4 mobile-phone maker, aims to gain 10 percent of China's market for handsets with a soccer promotion that may help it win sales from rivals such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc.
"We don't put ourselves under market-share pressure, but 10 is the magic number for us," Rudi Lamprecht, head of Siemens' mobile unit, said after announcing the company's sponsorship of the Chinese National Soccer League.
Munich-based Siemens both makes and sells handsets in China, the world's largest cellphone market. While it ranks third in produc-tion there, it trails overseas and local competitors in sales because it exports three-quarters of its output.
Now it's aiming to raise the share it sells locally.
It accounted for about 4 percent of the 70 million handsets sold last year in China, according to government figures.
"What we are doing with the sponsorship is to help us generate awareness of our brand," Lamprecht said.
"There is no customer loyalty in the cell-phone market," he said, suggesting Siemens will try to win users away from other brands.
He didn't specify a target date for achieving the market-share goal, or say how much Siemens will spend to promote its name and logo under the sponsorship deal.
Siemens expects as many as 430 million handsets to be shipped globally this year, Lamprecht said, repeating an earlier forecast.
That's less than Nokia's forecast of 445 million and higher than the 417 million handsets shipped last year, according to Strategic Analytics, a market research company.
Siemens and its local partner in Shanghai produced 11.6 million, or 8.8 percent, of the 132 million handsets made in China last year, according to Chinese government figures.
The Shanghai factory, which last year upgraded its annual capacity to 15 million phones from 11 million, isn't yet working at full production, Lamprecht said.
Siemens lags in sales in China behind local makers such as TCL Mobile Communication Co and Ningbo Bird Co, as well as overseas rivals such as Motorola and Nokia.
At the same time, it's trying to steal a march on competitors by working with Chinese partners to develop a new mobile-phone system that, if chosen by the Chinese government, could threaten sales of Qualcomm Inc, Ericsson AB and other suppliers of equipment that uses the current standards.
Siemens and Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Ltd, a company backed by the government, have spent more than two years developing the high-speed wireless technology, known as time-division synchronous code-division multiple access.
The technology is now being tested in the city of Chongqing.
Lamprecht said Siemens expects to have network equipment using the new standard ready for commercial sale by year-end.
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