India next big market: Qualcomm chief

BEIJING: Qualcomm Inc chief executive Irwin Jacobs said on Wednesday that

India was the next big market, but declined to comment on reports the wireless

technology firm was planning an investment soon.

The Economic Times newspaper said on Tuesday Qualcomm was likely to

invest around $200 million for a small stake in telecoms company Reliance

Infocom, a unit of India's largest private business conglomerate, the Reliance

group.

"We have not made any announcements at this point, so I won't

comment," Jacobs told reporters in Beijing, where he had attended the

launch ceremony of China's first national CDMA network.

China Unicom Group, China's number two mobile operator, announced on Tuesday

the small-scale launch of its long-awaited service using the CDMA standard in

the world's biggest market. Unicom threw into operation a $2.9 billion cellular

network based on the code division multiple access standard.

"I view India, by the way, as being the next major market," Jacobs

said. He labeled as "rumors" media reports of a Qualcomm investment in

India but in a hint they might have some truth he said they had mistaken the

size of a possible investment. "The rumors I've seen have had about a

factor of a two to one difference on the investment and so on," Jacobs

said.

In November, the Times of India said Qualcomm was in the final stages of

signing contracts to invest $300 million in Infocom. The more recent Economic

Times report quoted unnamed sources saying Jacobs was expected to sign a

contract on January 10 to pick up a stake smaller than five per cent.

Influential group Reliance aims to be an emerging power in the country's

fast-growing telecoms sector, which analysts say offers huge growth potential

because only about four in 100 of the more than one billion population have

telephones.

(C) Reuters Limited.