Friday, 1 September 2006

Taiwan's BenQ Corp Plans IMS Spin-Off, No Impact on BenQ Mobile

BenQ has announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, after it failed to make good on a promise to turn around its performance in the second quarter.

BenQ's earlier announcement that it is planning to spin off its contract-manufacturing business into a new entity called IMS, or integrated manufacturing services, does not include mobile phone production, it said in a statement, filed in response to recent media reports in the UK and Germany.

Further, the Taiwan company that acquired Siemens AG's handset operations in Oct 2005 said it currently has no plans to spin off its mobile phone business.

The planned spin-off would result in splitting BenQ into three business groups, namely BMG (BenQ Mobile Group) and DMG (Digital Media Group) as well as IMS.

IMS will focus on key components and integrated manufacturing and is scheduled to become an independent company in the first half of 2007, with investment partners coming on board in the second half, it said.

DMG will deal in BenQ-branded LCD monitors, projectors, TVs, digital cameras and laptops as well as other products, while BMG will remain unchanged, it added.