Sony Ericsson setting up R&D center in India

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications A.B. is setting up a research and development (R&D) unit for mobile phones in Chennai in south India.

The handset maker announced earlier this year that it was outsourcing its manufacturing to the Chennai operations of Flextronics Corp. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., which uses the brand name Foxconn.

By having R&D teams in India, the company will be better able to tap into consumer behavior in local markets, Sony Ericsson said Wednesday.

A number of mobile phone vendors are setting up manufacturing, R&D centers, and network operating centers in India, both to take advantage of India’s low-cost labor, and also to target India’s booming mobile phone market.

India added 6.57 million mobile telephony subscribers in May this year, taking the total number of subscribers to 178 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.

This mobile telephony boom has translated into heavy demand for mobile phones. Over 62 million handsets have been sold in India in the last 12 months, according to internal estimates by Sony Ericsson. The company is targeting production of 10 million phones from India by 2009.

The new facility will become part of Sony Ericsson’s global network of R&D units, currently comprised of sites in China, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, the U.S. and the U.K. The company did not, however, provide details of staffing or the nature of the work to be done at the new R&D facility.