(24 July 2001) Corning Inc. announced today that it has reached an agreement with Lucent Technologies to purchase Lucent's controlling equity interests in Lucent Technologies’ Shanghai Fiber Optic Co. and Lucent Technologies’ Beijing Fiber-Optic Cable Co. for US$225 million in cash.

According to a company statement, Corning intends to expand its presence in the growing Chinese telecommunications marketplace.

"The addition of these fiber- and cable-manufacturing assets is an important element of our regional growth strategy for China and Asia," said John Loose, Corning president and CEO. "With local fiber-manufacturing capability we will be able to gain stronger market access to Chinese cablers and end-user customers."

Lucent announced the sale of the two plants on the same day it reported a wider-than-expected loss for its fiscal third quarter—a 21 percent drop in revenue. The company said it plans to cut another 15,000 to 20,000 jobs to boost profitability, according to various media sources

SOURCE: Chinaonline.com

(2 August 2001) In order to enter the Chinese market, Japan’s Index Co., which provides cellphone information and content, and Mitsubishi Corp. plan to invest in China’s Linktone Co., which offers similar services in China.

This is the first time that Japanese cellphone information and content providers will enter the Chinese market, Sina.com reported on July 26.

Linktone has started to deliver cellphone information and content from Shanghai, and it hopes to improve its competitiveness through the addition of information and content from the Index Co., the article said. In addition, Mitsubishi plans to procure other Japanese information and content from companies other than the Index Co. and provide that data to Linktone.

At the end of March, the number of cellphone subscribers in China exceeded 100 million. It is estimated that by 2005, the number will grow to 240 million.

With the continuous and rapid growth of the current market, China Mobile, China's largest cellphone service provider, began to offer Monternet services (value-added mobile data services) in July and will start to charge for the data-transmission services this month.

Due to the new developments in China's cellphone information services, enterprises engaged in the provision of information and content, including large-scale Internet portals, are entering the Chinese market, the article noted

SOURCE: Chinaonline.com

(30 August 2001)On Aug. 18, the two soft-drink makers began a price war. By Aug. 26, Coke had posted a record-low price tag for its two-liter bottle: two yuan (US$0.24).

SOURCE: Chinaonline.com

(10 July 2001) Siemens AG said recently that it would make an additional investment of US$60 million to increase the output of cellphones at its Shanghai plant.

It is estimated that by the end of 2002, the cellphone output of the company will grow by 40 percent with an annual output of 14 million sets.

Meanwhile, Siemens will also make an investment to increase the output of mobile communications network devices from 60,000 units to 80,000 units, according to the July 5 Sina.com.

Siemens' telecommunications division said that by the end of this year, the output of its plant in Shanghai would fall short of demand, and therefore Siemens had decided to expand the production.

According to Siemens' estimate, it will sell 5 million cellphones in China this year, while in 2000 it sold only 1.9 million, the article said.

In addition, Siemens and some Chinese organizations are jointly developing the third-generation (3G) mobile communications technology, time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA), proposed by China.

SOURCE: Chinaonline.com