German engineering and technology company Siemens AG and China’s Huawei Technologies said Friday they planed to set up a joint venture to develop products based on China’s homegrown wireless standard.

Siemens would hold a 51 percent stake in the company, to be known as TD Tech. Ltd., with Huawei owning the remaining 49 percent, the companies said in a joint statement issued at a news conference in Beijing.

The joint venture will develop the time division-synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA), standard for third-generation (3G) mobile phone systems.

TD-SCDMA is one of three 3G wireless standards competing for approval from China’s telecommunications regulators.

TD Tech. Ltd. will be initially capitalized at US$100 million, said TD Tech. chief executive Klaus Maler.

He also said Siemens had invested US$170 million in the development of TD-SCDMA technology in the past five years.

“We wouldn’t have invested in this technology if we had doubts about its success,” he said.

The joint venture’s first commercial products should be launched “before the end of the year,” said Peter Weiss, executive vice president of Siemens China.

Most of the foreign carriers wanted to see whether China and its phone companies would underwrite TD-SCDMA by building a system based on it when Chinese 3G licenses were awarded, a development expected later this year, industry insiders said.

(Shenzhen Daily March 21, 2005)