Siemens carves out cordless phone, broadband unit

Germany's Siemens is carving out a new subsidiary from its loss-making telecoms unit, Com, which will run all of Com's remaining consumer businesses and have annual sales of some 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion). The new entity, to be called Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices, will run cordless-phone and broadband services for homes and small offices, Siemens said in a statement on Tuesday.
The unit, which is currently profitable, will be based in Munich and will be launched on October 1. It represents around 6 percent of Com's business.
Siemens had previously said it would carve out its mobile-phones and handsets businesses and combine them into a new unit. Since then, Taiwanese technology group BenQ agreed to take over the loss-making mobile phones unit.
Asked whether the carve-out in its new form could be a precursor to a sale or joint venture of the unit, a Siemens spokesman said: "It's not on the agenda at the moment."
Paul Reitmeier and Thomas Kresser, who currently run the business at Siemens, will head the new unit with around 3,700 employees world-wide. The business will be managed as part of Siemens Com.
Siemens Com Chief Executive Lothar Pauly said in the statement: "Our goal is to become world leader in the voice, data and video communication devices market, which is projected to be worth 16 billion euros by 2010."
He said the unit would work closely with telecoms operators to manage their so-called triple-play strategies - offering voice, Internet and television content via a single high-speed broadband line. It would also sell to domestic consumers.
Last week, Siemens Com posted a deeper-than-expected operating loss for the June quarter despite the disposal of the mobile-handsets unit, helping drag Siemens' group operating profit down by more than a quarter.
Siemens Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld said there was still a lot of work to do and said executive working parties at loss-making units including Com would present plans to fix their businesses to central management at the end of August.