Tecom obtains NT$1.5 billion in orders from Sony Ericsson

Taipei, March 1, 2004 (CENS)--Tecom Co., Ltd., one of Taiwan's leading manufacturers of telecommunications products, recently announced it has acquired NT$1.5 billion (US$45.18 million at US$1:NT$33.2) worth of orders for high-end net and telecom equipment from Sony Ericsson.

With the injection of the big-ticket orders, Tecom projected its revenue will grow 35% to challenge the NT$10 billion (US$301.2 million) mark from last year's NT$7.676 billion (US$231.2 million). The company also predicted its profits for this year will double that of last year.

The company said it posted NT$112 million (US$3.37 million) in after-tax earnings, or NT$0.38 (US$0.01) in earnings per share, last year.

Tecom president C.K. Liu said his company has recently begun shipping ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) equipment of 820,000 subscriber lines to Chunghwa Telecom Co., 210,000 lines of which will be delivered by March 12. The company said the shipment of the ADSL equipment will greatly help boost its revenue this year.

Liu said his company will offer ADSL2, an upgraded version of ADSL equipment, to Chunghwa because over the past few years the telecom carrier has demanded high-speed equipment to facilitate the introduction of multimedia-on-demand services.

Meanwhile, Tecom has been promoting South Korea's Innostream-brand mobile phones handsets through the ET Shopping TV channel. Liu said his company sold 25,000 units of the Innostream phone handsets in January.

Tecom said it would introduce 15 brand-new types of cell phones to the domestic market this year. Of them, a type of high-tier camera cell phones featuring one million pixels will be introduced in June.