Finnish mobile software firm to launch Bangalore operations

BANGALORE - Finland-based mobile software firm Qvantel Oy, which has Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and TeliaSonera among its clients, is setting up a centre of excellence in Bangalore to provide software product engineering services to global mobile handset manufacturers and operators, a company official said.

“As part of our growth strategy, we are expanding our operations in India with a centre of excellence here by September to provide software applications and engineering services to global telecom vendors and chip-set makers,” Qvantel’s Indian subsidiary vice-president Rajesh Sengamedu told IANS.

The subsidiary has a software development centre in Hyderabad where about 50 engineers outsource services and support systems to the company’s tier-1 customers in Europe.

“The Bangalore centre, with an upfront investment of Rs.3-4 crore (Rs.30-40 million), will have about 30 engineers initially to execute some of the projects for our Scandinavian telecom handset and chipset customers with the advantage of an offshore environment,” Sengamedu said.

The euro 10 million (Rs.550 million) Helsinki firm offers products, solutions and services to tier-1 handset manufacturers, leading cellular operators and network vendors across Europe and Asia.

Elisa, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, TeliaSonera, ST-Ericsson, Yoigo, Aina group and TDC are some of its leading enterprise customers.

“The presence of our Nordic customers with their research and development (R&D) centres is another factor to expand our India operations to Bangalore, which offers opportunities to provide our domain expertise to other major handset manufacturers and chipset vendors,” Sengamedu noted.

With mobile handsets evolving into multi-applications devices, companies like Qvantel provide embedded software codes for rich features before products are shipped to customers by the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).

“Mobiles are no more a mere voice or data devices but a virtual platform for a host of applications and a range of services customers are aspiring to meet their growing needs at ease,” Sengamedu pointed out.

Even before the entry of the third generation (3G) service through private operators, around one-third of over 600 million subscribers in India use their handsets for a variety of functions ranging from calendar, chat, email, games, productivity, social networking, maps and browsing.

“These functions require a host software applications and support that are outsourced from third-party vendors like us by OEMs, which rollout different models to meet the needs of different customers,” Sengamedu said.

ST Ericssion, Infineon, Broadcom, MediaTek and Renesas are some of the leading hardware players, which provide platforms for software firms such as Android, RIM, iPhone, Symbian OS, Java, Flash Lite and Brew to build the applications in partnership with middle-level enterprises like Qvantel.

The seamless integration and extension of the net to the mobile platform has created multiple opportunities for software services on client-server model.

“Market studies estimate the current value of mobile handset related software outsourcing opportunity is $2-3 billion worldwide. In addition, large Indian OEMs and chipset vendors outsource software R&D services worth $300 million currently,” Sengamedu observed.

The Bangalore centre will also target OEMs, chipset vendors and design centres outside Europe to scale its operations over the next two years to 200 engineers and generate export revenue of about Rs.30 crore (Rs.300 million) by 2012 from Rs.2 crore (Rs.20 million) this calendar year (2010).