Siemens and Benq to establish joint-venture

Siemens, the biggest German electronics' manufacturer, is going to establish a partnership with Taiwanese company Benq, in order to bring back some life into its mobile handsets unit, reports the Financial Times.

This decision, which will be presumably taken after the meeting of the supervising council scheduled for today, is caused by the very important financial losses the company has suffered last year, at least related the GSM handsets manufacturing branch, which rose to the amount of 500 million Euros (613 million dollars).

During last year, the market share of Siemens AG dropped to 5.5 %, the lowest level since 1999, while the value of the competitor's shares, Nokia Oyj and DAX, has increased with 24%, respectively 14%.

But the possibility of a partnership for the mobile handsets sector is not a new one at all. The company from Munich announced as early as last year its intention of selling or establishing a joint-venture for this branch of its business, which is also likely to include its cordless phones manufacturing unit.

Although no official statement or comment have been released by any of the involved parties, is looks like Benq, who spun off Acer last year, has the biggest changes of becoming the next partner of Siemens in the cell phones industry, against the other candidates for this position Ningbo Bird - Siemens' partner in China - or the Koreans from LG Electronics.