Cisco Systems Inc expects China to become its second-biggest market within 10 years, the network equipment maker's country chief said on June 22. Growth would come as China's mobile and fixed-line carriers upgraded their networks, government offices put more functions online and the country built more infrastructure, said Jia-Bin Duh, president of Cisco Systems China.
"This market has the opportunity to grow to become the number two market for Cisco," Duh told reporters.
"John Chambers keeps asking me to make China the number two market for Cisco," Duh said, referring to the company's chief executive.
Asked how long that would take, Duh said, "Less than 10 years, conservatively."
Duh declined to say how much Cisco's sales in China were, but said it was already in the company's top five markets, along with the United States, Japan, Britain and Germany.
Cisco was optimistic that once China issued licences for next-generation 3G wireless phone services, the company would sell more of its high-end routers and network products.
"I have no idea about when the licences are going to released, but we are just crossing our fingers and hoping it will come as early as possible," Duh said. Cisco would also increase the amount of goods it outsources from China. Last year it outsourced $5 billion worth - nearly 25 percent of its annual revenues, Duh said.
"We are targeting to make this 40 percent at the end of 2006," Duh said.
Last month, Cisco opened its ninth office in China, in the city of Urumqi in the far-flung western region of Xinjiang.
"There are a lot of oilfields and gas pipelines around Urumqi, and all that infrastructure construction needs networks to support it," Duh said.
Cisco competes against the likes of 3Com of the United States and China's Huawei Technologies. 3Com and Huawei have a joint venture that makes routers and switches used to control traffic on telecoms networks.
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