BIZCHINA / Overseas Investment
Cisco to shift into consumer market
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-09-20 14:09
Cisco Systems Inc will increase investment in its Shanghai research
center, where it is working on consumer-oriented products such as network
DVD players and Internet-protocol TV equipment, the company's chief
development officer said yesterday in the city.
Within the next year, the US-based router giant will invest almost US$4
billion on research and development, mainly in its five research centers
worldwide, including the Shanghai operation.
Cisco plans to double staff to 500 at the local center by the middle of
next year,
In the future, Cisco's Shanghai center, founded in 2005 with an
investment of US$32 million, will hire more than 1,000 engineers, about
10 percent of the company's global total for researchers, said Charles
Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, without providing a
specific timetable.
Cisco's local center is now working on new technologies, from voice over
Internet protocol to IPTV and network DVD devices that play
computer-stored videos on TV screens through wireless connections.
"We have strong technologies for Internet protocol," Giancarlo said in an
interview at the center.
Cisco will launch a new marketing campaign next month to target end
users, including changing its logo, Giancarlo said, declining to
elaborate.
"The competition in the enterprise router market is heated, and Cisco,
though still No. 1, is losing market share to rivals in China," said
Zhang Tao, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, a research firm
under the Ministry of Information Industry.
As such, Cisco is forced to find other business opportunities, such as
the promising consumer market, Zhang said.
"The key point (in assessing the consumer sector) is price, and Cisco has
to cut costs on management and talent," Zhang said.
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
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