Cogo Group bets on expansion of railways and power grids
Oct-28-2010 By : agxadmin
Cogo Group is betting on the government’s massive spending on high-speed railway systems and so-called smart power grids to help drive its annual revenue to USD1 billion over the next few years. Shenzhen-based Cogo, which is listed on Nasdaq in the United States, is the mainland’s largest supplier of custom-designed embedded solutions used by manufacturers of smartphones, network routers, cellular base stations, high-definition television set-top boxes, personal computers, smart meters and cars. The company’s embedded hardware and software modules used in cars, smart meters, smart power grids and high-speed railways are part of its industrial applications business, which was established about two years ago and now accounts for about 17% of its total revenue. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Kang, who founded Cogo in 1995 as Comtech Communication Technology (Shenzhen) Co, said industrial applications are the firm’s fastest-growing market segment.
Cogo reported a 23.6% year-on-year increase in second-quarter sales to USD91 million, 17.4% of which was generated by its industrial applications business. Its digital media business, which includes embedded components for handsets and mobile internet devices, contributed 57.4% of total sales while telecommunications made up 23.9%. About 1.3% of sales came from so-called value-added services to customers. China’s capital expenditure for smart meters required for advanced new power grids is expected to total USD7 billion by next year. China has announced plans to upgrade 300 million standard electrical meters in residential and commercial locations to smart meters in five years. Expansion of the railway system will require USD75 billion worth of system control devices. Cogo has signed up as customers railway control device makers such as China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock, China Railway Signal and Communications, and Nari Information and Telecommunications. Chairman Jeffrey Kang also sees “tremendous potential” for Cogo in the car market. The firm has carmakers BYD Auto and Geely Automobile Holdings as customers. Partners working with Cogo to design embedded components for its more than 1,500 customers include software giant Microsoft, Intel, Xilinx, Broadcom, Panasonic and Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group. Kang expects Cogo to have about 5,000 customers when its USD1 billion annual revenue goal is reached in the next few years, the South China Morning Post reports.
EMC to speed up expansion in China
By : agxadmin
EMC Corp, the world’s largest supplier of enterprise data storage systems and software, plans to speed up its expansion in China next year with a series of strategic partnerships, joint ventures and country-specific products. United States-based EMC will increase the number of its branch offices across the nation to 21 from the existing 13 and add more staff from the current 2,000 employees. “While we’re happy that we’re growing in China, we believe we should be growing substantially faster,” said Pat Gelsinger, President and COO of EMC’s information infrastructure products business. China accounted for about 2.5 per cent of the firm’s US$14 billion global revenue last year. Domestic sales of EMC products have been rising more than 30 per cent year on year, powered by large customers such as e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group, online gaming giant Tencent Holdings, banks, and the telecommunications network operators. EMC also hoped to forge strategic partnerships with the country’s three nationwide telecommunications carriers – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. The company has started supporting service providers to roll out cloud computing services to support the data center requirements of enterprises.
Research report describes Foxconn as “labor camp”
By : agxadmin
Foxconn has been described as a “labor camp” that severely violates China’s labour laws and abuses workers physically and mentally, in a research report jointly produced by 20 universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland. The 83-page report draws on interviews with more than 1,800 workers from 12 Foxconn-owned factories in nine Chinese cities. It found fresh evidence that the Taiwanese company forces assembly-line employees to work double or triple the legal limit on overtime. It describes a Spartan management style, extensive employment of teenage students, and failure to report a considerable number of industrial injuries for which workers were unable to receive statutory compensation. It found that at least 17 Foxconn workers had attempted to commit suicide since January – of whom 13 died – rather than the 14 suicide attempts widely reported by the Hong Kong media. In a joint open letter, researchers from the 20 universities urged Terry Gou – Chairman of Foxconn’s Taiwanese parent company, Hon Hai Precision Industry – to respect workers’ legal rights and fulfil the company’s social responsibilities. The researchers reported that employees were forced to work 80 to 100 hours of overtime per month. Under China’s labor law, the legal limit on overtime is 36 hours a month. Tens of thousands of teenage vocational school students, many without the protection of labor contracts or statutory industrial insurance, work under the same conditions in Foxconn’s factories, the South China Morning Post reports. Foxconn has for the second time this year increased the salaries of workers at its giant Shenzhen plant. In June, Foxconn increased salaries by 30%, from CNY900 to CNY1,200 and now raised them further to CNY2,000. The legal minimum wage in Shenzhen is CNY1,100 per month.
Lenovo Group reports surge in shipments
By : agxadmin
Lenovo Group recorded the biggest percentage gain in global personal computer shipments last quarter, lifted by strong demand outside its core China market. The company reported a 33% rise in shipments in the third quarter to 9.2 million units from 6.9 million units a year earlier, according to separate preliminary estimates released by market research firms Gartner and International Data Corp (IDC). Lenovo expanded its global market share to 10.4% from 8.4% the previous year, noted Gartner. IDC calculated Lenovo’s market share at 10.3%, up from 8.6%. Gartner Analyst Simon Ye said said Lenovo managed to generate up to 23% growth in China last quarter. Gartner estimated domestic personal computer shipments reached 18.4 million units, comprising 62% of the Asia-Pacific’s 29.7 million units in total shipments last quarter.
Flextronics opens new manufacturing and design center
By : agxadmin
Flextronics International has launched its most advanced manufacturing and design center for computer products in China in the Wuzhong Export Processing Zone in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. The facility will deliver complete design and production capabilities for desktops, laptops and “all-in-one computers”, tablets and internet-ready smartphones. The center has a production capacity of 1 million units a month, and will have more than 12,000 engineering and manufacturing employees. The company operates in 30 countries and has a total of 18 manufacturing sites and three research and development centers at seven locations in China. Flextronics rival Hon Hai Precision Industry is ahead in producing media tablets in China because of its long-standing relationship with Apple, whose popular iPods and iPhones it also makes. The Taiwanese firm, better known under its Foxconn Technology Group trade name, projects its global shipments of Apple’s iPad will hit more than 30 million units next year.
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