Motorola Inc. has expanded its research and development (R&D) resources in Asia, with new centers opened this week in India and Taiwan, and more in preparation in China, according to an executive of the company.
“Motorola is focusing a lot of development in the Asia Pacific region, because it is growing so fast,” Michael Krutz, vice president of the Core Networks Division of Motorola Networks, said Wednesday. “Locating our development close to the markets that are growing makes a lot of sense,” said Krutz. “As opposed to flying people from all over the world, you have all the expertise locally and close to the customers.”
The availability of talented staff in the region is another reason why Motorola is expanding its R&D in Asia, Krutz added.
The Schaumburg, Illinois, company announced the opening of new R&D centers in Bangalore, India, and Taipei, Taiwan, on Tuesday. The company also plans to set up new development centers in China, Krutz said. “These will be probably be primarily for our Networks group, on the infrastructure side, ” he added. T
he new Bangalore center, which was formally inaugurated Wednesday, will do about 80 percent to 85 percent of the development work required by Motorola’s Core Networks Division, Krutz said. The other development centers for this division are in Spain and in the U.S., he added.
The center employs 250 staff which will be increased to about 500 in the next few years, according to Krutz. “All of the development for all our new products, including soft switching, IMS (IP multimedia subsystems ), push-to-talk over cellular, will be done here in Bangalore,” said Krutz, who added that the center will handle functions all the way from system engineering through system testing.
The center also houses a development group focused on embedded communications and computing. This group of about 100 staff became part of Motorola after the company’s acquisition last year of Force Computers, an embedded computing business of Solectron Corp.
The new center takes the number of Motorola’s R&D centers in India to four, with another under construction. Motorola Global Software Group has centers in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Motorola Labs also set up a lab in Bangalore in April to do research in the areas of converged networks, autonomic networking and enterprise applications.
Motorola’s new R&D center in Taiwan is the company’s second in Taiwan, and will operate from Motorola’s Shin Dian Plant in Taipei. The center will focus on developing Motorola’s broadband and wireless technologies, including Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless. The new R&D center will provide greater cost efficiencies and streamline the worldwide delivery of Motorola Connected Home applications to its customers, according to the company.