Europe : With the new CL55 clamshell mobile handset, Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) intends to win new market share in the hotly contested Chinese mobile phone market.

The CL55 was developed especially for China; in addition to a 65,000-color display, it also enables extra-long Chinese SMS to be written. With this handset, Siemens mobile is responding to the strong demand in China for clamshell mobile phones, which accounted for 55 percent of all mobile handsets sold there in September.

The CL55 is part of Siemens mobile’s strategy of serving regional markets with their own special products. Design-conscious Chinese mobile communication customers can opt for this model in silver, red or blue. 40 polyphonic ringer tones can be assigned to different callers. And because the issue of Multi Media Messaging (MMS) is becoming increasingly popular in China, as well, a snap-on camera is also available for the CL55.

The handset will be on the market in November. It supplements the CL50 from Siemens mobile, another clamshell mobile phone that is also tailored to Asian taste preferences.

With 250 million mobile phone users, China is the world’s largest mobile communication market. The customers of the mobile operators there can choose from a selection of more than 200 devices.

Around 40 percent of all phones sold recently featured color displays: This demonstrates the strong demand that exists in China for the entire product spectrum, from simple entry-level handsets right through to high-end multimedia devices. Since the beginning of the year, Siemens mobile has introduced 16 mobile phone models in China. The new collection of Xelibri phones was shown last week at the Fashion Rocks Shanghai trade show. The SL55 Sliderphone was especially popular: During the third quarter, nearly one out of every ten phones from Siemens sold in Asia was an SL55.

During the period from July through September, Siemens mobile grew its market share in China from five to six percent.

Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) offers a complete range of mobile solutions including mobile devices, infrastructure and applications. Devices include mobile phones, wireless modules, mobile organizers and cordless phones as well as products for wireless home networks. The infrastructure portfolio includes GSM, GPRS and 3G mobile network technologies from base stations and switching systems to intelligent networks, e.g. for prepaid services. Mobile Applications cover end-to-end solutions for Messaging, Location Based Services or Mobile Payment. For fiscal 2002 (September 30), Siemens mobile recorded sales of EUR 11 billion and employed approximately 28,600 people worldwide.