Siemens, China's Huawei in Joint-Venture

German telecoms giant Siemens will set up a new $100 million joint-venture with China's largest network equipment firm, Huawei Technologies, Chinese state press said Wednesday. The Beijing-based joint-venture, TD Tech, will produce next generation TD-SCDMA network equipment and mobile phones, the Beijing Times said. Details on the stakes held by Siemens and Huawei were not disclosed but the venture will start rolling out equipment for establishing TD-SCDMA base stations by mid-2005. TD-SCDMA is the third-generation (3G) telecommunication standard, jointly developed by Siemens and China's Datang Mobile. Although there is no timetable for the issue of 3G licenses in China, global telecoms players are busy preparing to access the world's largest mobile phone market, with some 300 million subscribers. The other two 3G standards competing with TD-SCDMA for China's 3G licenses are CDMA2000, developed by US-based Qualcomm, and Europe's W-CDMA.