Motorola Sets Up New India R&D Facility

Motorola inaugurated a new research and development (R&D) facility in Hyderabad, India, in the presence of the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, Edward Zander.

The new center will house more than 1,000 engineers, who will support R&D of cutting-edge software, Motorola said. The center will have a large team of engineers developing software for an intelligent user interface for Motorola phones. The center will also work on technologies such as WiMax, network management and autonomics, security and high-availability platforms, the company said.

The Schaumburg, Ill., company already has software development and research labs in India, which together employ about 3,000 staff. The company has also announced plans to manufacture mobile phones and network base stations in Chennai in south India by next year.

Motorola set up its first R&D facility India in Bangalore in 1991. Motorola designs and develops software in India for its entire range of products, including next-generation wireless and broadband technologies, software platforms and application frameworks. As much as 40 percent of the software used in Motorola phones is developed by Motorola Software Group’s Indian design centers. Besides Motorola Software Group, other divisions of the company including Motorola Labs, Core Networks Division and Embedded Communications Computing have development operations in India.

A number of multinational telecommunications equipment companies are investing in India, which is adding about 6 million new mobile subscribers a month.

Motorola’s competitors Nokia and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson have also invested in manufacturing in India, after the country’s largest service provider, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), indicated that it would give preference to vendors that make equipment locally. BSNL, in Delhi, is owned by the Indian government.

However, Motorola took BSNL to court earlier this month after being excluded in the technical evaluation for a large order from BSNL. The company asked in its petition for greater transparency in BSNL’s tender process.

-John Ribeiro, IDG News Service (Bangalore Bureau)

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