LG Electronics has announced the opening of its European R&D Centre in Paris, France, to expand its GSM and WCDMA mobile phone market. Having dedicated product development and design centres are crucial to meet the company`s goal of entering the global handset industry`s `global top three` by 2006.
The newly-established R&D Centre will enable the company to develop the most sophisticated multimedia feature phones in the most competitive mobile phone market and to positively accommodate diverse market and customer needs.
In addition, LG Electronics will be able to strengthen its relationship with service providers such as Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile, Orange and other regional operators by establishing an R&D base in the region. Likewise, the company can positively meet specific market needs as well as development of 3G and 4G next-generation mobile phones.
In particular, operating in Paris are organisations such as ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) that oversee technological standards of 2G and next-generation mobile telecommunication services. As such, the location is ideal for companies to conduct mobile telecommunication standards-related works.
President Moon-Hwa Park of the Mobile Communications Company at LG Electronics said: "The establishment of the European R&D Centre, together with the expansion of mobile phone production bases in India, Brazil and other areas, has strengthened our global R&D system that can ensure LGE`s localisation business strategy."
LG Electronics operates R&D centres in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore and Moscow. The opening of R&D centre in Paris has strengthened LG Electronics` global R&D presence in penetrating the global mobile phone market.
James Kim, President for European Headquarters, added: "The establishment of R&D centre in Europe has created an environment in which we can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position our research centre as the R&D hub penetrating the mobile phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than 150-plus people this year."
Meanwhile, LG Electronics is continuing its efforts to secure superior human resources pool. The company will recruit more than 30% of its researchers outside Korea and secure a total of over 5 000 mobile handset R&D manpower by 2006.
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