BenQ-Siemens to close European arm

[Jacob_Stevenson]

In a shock announcement, BenQ has announced the effective closure of their European BenQ-Siemens mobile phone business - less than a year after the brand was launched - due to unsustainable losses.


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[Dynamoo]

I read somewhere else that they aimed for 10% market share but got only 3%, and that BenQ lost something like €800 million in a year.

You could tell the Siemens designed handsets in the BenQ-Siemens lineup.. they were the good ones. BenQ.. well, frankly most of their designs are crap. I should imagine that BenQ will close down their Asian operations soon too.

[hotzigetty]

nope.. seems benq asia is going strong..

[brad]

The BQS brand is continuing, they will just be using Asian R&D and manufacturing plants.

http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=2760

[Jose_R.A.M]

shock announcement?

"more impressive effort than Motorola's minimal efforts. But it appears that BenQ do not want to sink any more money into this operation, and the potential synergy that might have created a new Sony Ericsson has been lost"

OOH...so dramatic.

Anyway, dynamoo, this sounds like something you were talking about

BenQ's German Workers Blame Former Owners Siemens

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A model holds up a BenQ-Siemens mobile phone
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: German factory workers are not happy that Siemens-BenQ has declared insolvency

The decision by Taiwan's BenQ to shut off further investment in its German subsidiary BenQ-Siemens and seek insolvency protection has left the company's 3,000 employees feeling betrayed.

The news of the insolvency hit staff like a bolt from the blue, according to Wolfgang Mueller of the IG Metall trade union.

'This is worse than anything we could have expected. Morally the former owners Siemens are responsible for the disaster," Mueller told German news agency dpa.

It was no secret that all was not well at BenQ, Taiwan's largest mobile phone maker. The company, which produces projectors and digital music players as well, had also announced last week that it would halt production at its only factory in Taiwan.

After taking over the Siemens business last year, BenQ aimed to secure at least 10 percent of the world market, but at the last count this figure was just 3 percent.

Management was also not hopeful regarding the vital Christmas season.

Employees shocked and angered by news

A busy street in Taiwan with a tall BenQ office building in the backgroundBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: BenQ took over Siemens' mobile section in 2005

Workers at the Munich headquarters, where 1,400 are employed, suspected bad news when they were called to an "All-hands-Meeting" Thursday. Nevertheless the news that the company was effectively bankrupt came as a shock to most of them.

"We are deeply hurt," workers' representatives on the board said. They said they had believed assurances from Taiwan that the company would be retained.

At the company's plant at Kamp-Lintfort there was anger and frustration. Many members of staff learnt of the company's pending insolvency over the radio as they were on their way into work.

"We already see ourselves in line at the employment office," one member of staff said at the gates to the plant. "Insolvency is the best thing for BenQ. Then they don't have to pay us a cent."

Trouble keeping up with the market

Siemens was unable to make a go of its mobile division, showing little aptitude for keeping up with consumer trends, such as color display and photography, where the company entered the market late.

BenQ aimed to change this, but relied largely on the original management.

"In reality, the problems simply continued," a sector analyst said.

The company's flexibility and speed in reacting to new developments still left much to be desired.

Siemens is no longer involved in the corporate group. New Siemens head Klaus Kleinfeld has promised that by early next year all divisions in the electrical group will have achieved ambitious profit margins.

New Siemens boss opted to drop mobile division

The mobile phone division had no chance of doing so and Kleinfeld took the logical, if drastic, step of complete disposal. Siemens has also disposed of other units or entered into partnerships with them.

A stop sign in the foreground, the BenQ building in Kamp-Lintfort in the backgroundBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Many employees heard the news on the radio

The mobile phone division went to BenQ for a symbolic price, with the Taiwanese receiving millions from Siemens to sweeten the deal.

"We felt like an unwanted child," says one member of staff who has been with Siemens and BenQ for 39 years.

He said he sees it as a shame that Siemens did not have the courage and patience to revitalize its problematic units. Mueller also criticized the traditional German company of resorting to radical measures in order to fulfill short-term profit goals.

"BenQ staff is now paying for the failings of Siemens' management," he says.



Future production in Asia

A Siemens spokeswoman said the company was watching developments at BenQ. "We are very sorry to see this," she said.

BenQ aims to use the brand and the expertise of its former Siemens division, but the mobile phones themselves will in future be produced in Asia.

Many in Germany suspected when the Taiwanese bought the unit last year that they were only interested in the brand name and not in the relatively expensive German production facilities.

"They waited until the Siemens money was used up and then simply turned off the tap," a sector analyst says.

[difenbaker]

Originally Posted by hotzigetty

nope.. seems benq asia is going strong..

... kinda ironic, I think. "Siemens" is an established brand of electronics - one which prided itself by having german engineering. Now it's gone from europe and is being continued in asia.

if memory serves... the name 'siemens' will be gone from their phones by the end of next year.
http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=11017

[Jose_R.A.M]

Originally Posted by difenbaker

... kinda ironic, I think. "Siemens" is an established brand of electronics - one which prided itself by having german engineering. Now it's gone from europe and is being continued in asia.

if memory serves... the name 'siemens' will be gone from their phones by the end of next year.
http://forums.mobileburn.com/showthread.php?t=11017

But it will still have the full BenQ Siemens right? Or are you saying it will just be BenQ.

BQS hardly made a ripple in Britain as far as I'm aware. It was very much too little too late. The siemens (mobile wise) name was already something that in my experience, consumers tried to avoid for dislike, or just avoided because they weren't familiar with it.

The next Sony Ericsson? (in one of the articles) When Sony Ericsson was forged, how the world thought of mobile phones then isn't how they think of them now. It was probably much easier to create a name for yourself in a environment that's relatively young and naive.

When BQS was made, it was some strange unknown brand in a market that already knew what it wanted. There were trends, standards already set by the big mobile manufacturers. Consumers knew what they wanted. You either have to go in all guns blazing, marketing here and there your new innovative handsets or you'll end up with major losses.

Kinda sad if the whole BQS thing does go kaput. Competition is always good as it brings out better products for consumers (not that BQS did deliver anything that was in serious competition with anything..but we'll never know if the Asia side ends up like the european counterpart)

[666joe]

If they marketed on time, released on time and put effort into the devices they would have done so well....

[Dynamoo]

They tried to do too many devices I think, maybe 25+ in a year. SE started out with just a handful of really good ones, such as the T610.

There's certainly a shake-out in the European market. Sendo went last year, then Panasonic, NEC is said to be preparing to pull out and of course there's BenQ-Siemens. Sharp is doing nothing interesting and I can't imagine will last through 2007. Toshiba came and went.

Some of the design concepts I've seen floating around from BQS are gorgeous - and I think it's a sad fact that consumers are more interested in looks than features.. look at the LG Chocolate and the KRZR. If BQS had actually got more stuff off the drawing board and into the shops.. and if it actually WORKED properly then perhaps they could have been less of a disaster area.

[Ghibli]

I think the expectations of the public as well as the projections by BenQ themselves for a turnaround were grossly over-optimistic; end 2006 was simply too soon.
With regards to SE, remember that they did not simply start out with a breakthrough model. The T610 actually arrived more than a year after Sony Ericsson commenced operations; before that they were struggling with weak-selling models like the T68i, T200, T600, T100, T300 and much-delayed P800.

I also think that BenQ's move to keep the Siemens brand in order to break into the global market more effectively backfired. I don't know about Europe, but over here consumers are less apprehensive towards new brands than one would think. With strong features and aggressive advertising, brands like Dopod and Mitsubishi have been readily taken up by operators, and subsequently sold very, very well. BenQ could have been the same. In fact, over here some BenQ-branded phones have been launched along with the BenQ-Siemens branded ones and they sell just as many, if not more.
So I think the Siemens brand, along with weak advertising (all the EF81 got here was a pathetic radio ad; the cheaper S88 got the bulk of advertising), crippled BenQ Mobile's strong lineup.

[Jose_R.A.M]

BNAmericas.com

BenQ to close operations in Southern Cone

Taiwanese mobile handset manufacturer BenQ has decided to close its operations in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Argentine newspaper El Cronista reported.

According to the newspaper, BenQ could also close its Chilean subsidiary as a consequence of a crisis the company is experiencing in its global operations.

BenQ started operations in Argentina five months ago through the acquisition of the mobile telephony unit of Germany's Siemens.
The Argentine subsidiary, in charge of operations in Uruguay and Paraguay, will remain open until November.

The company announced in early September plans to boost investment at its Manaus plant in northern Brazil to 10mn reais (US$4.6mn) this year.

[alfagt]

Does all of this mean that BQS phones will be no longer available to buy? A pity if this happens, was looking forward to getting the SL91. I hope they still launch it.

[666joe]

Hoping the pending BENQ stock goes on sale as I'd but a few...

Not sure on the waranty situation though.....

[MikeUK]

Originally Posted by difenbaker

... kinda ironic, I think. "Siemens" is an established brand of electronics - one which prided itself by having german engineering. Now it's gone from europe and is being continued in asia.

Wasn't it just the phone part of Siemens that was sold to BenQ?

[carcomptoy]

The cellphone market is increasingly becoming like the automobile market...all the smaller manufacturers being weeded out and exterminated, with the bigger manufacturers monopolizing the market. Only Asia still has a wide array of manufacturers lol.