Siemens has entered into discussions with other mobile phone
manufacturers in hopes of merging their handset-production
operations.
In giving up its independent mobile phone manufacturing business,
Siemens is following a similar strategy to Ericsson, which
announced earlier this year that it would combine its handset
operations with Sony's.
The company believes that, in the long term, only Nokia would
survive as an independent handset manufacturer, said Siemens
spokesman Alex Heim. Heim would not name any of the companies
Siemens is considering.
Siemens slipped from fourth to fifth place in the global mobile
phone market during the third quarter, according to figures from
Dataquest. The German company sold 6.8m units during the quarter,
taking 7.2% of the world market. In the same quarter of 2000,
Siemens sold 9m handsets, an 8.7% market share. Nokia, by contrast,
shipped 31.6m units in the last quarter, which makes up 33.4% of
the world market.
Siemens recently announced the loss of some 22m euros (£13.6m)
before interest and taxes on its mobile phone business during the
third quarter. However, Heim said that the losses were largely due
to a one-off write-off, without which mobile phone manufacturing
would have earned some 50m euros (£31m).