US software big name BEA plans to conduct acquisitions in China to increase its presence in the Chinese market, especially within the fast-growing telecommunications sector, said the company Chairman and Chief Executive Alfred Chuang in Beijing.

BEA is the world's sixth largest independent software provider. It specializes in application infrastructure software, providing a range of enterprises with software foundations.

"It is still too early to tell how much we will spend on acquisitions in China and who we will target, but we will focus on finding teams of people who have knowledge in areas where we want to go," said Chuang, at the sideline of the annual BEA World event in China.

BEA World is the US software firm's annual event, which is first held in Silicon Valley and then tours five other cities around the world to showcase BEA's new products and build up customer relations.

BEA boasts fast growth and attributes aggressive acquisitions as the key to its success, according to the company website.

Chuang said his company will focus on finding Chinese companies with strong experience and capabilities in the telecommunications industry, a strategic business for the US firm.

The firm has claimed to be the biggest telecom billing platform software provider in China with almost 90 percent of the market share in this sector.

"China is a very unique market, so we must adopt a unique approach," said the chief executive of the software firm.

He believed that China is unique in the way that there are just two mobile operators and two fixed-line operators, all of which set different technological specifications, requiring unique software platforms. This means a lot for the software providers, since European and US telecom operators in comparison do not set different specifications across networks.

However, "considering the size of only one mobile operator (China Mobile) in terms of subscribers, equals the total of all US subscribers, it does seem justified that each Chinese operator sets their own individual standards," said Chuang.

As China is poised to launch the third generation (3G) mobile communication system, Chuang believed that this will bring the company more opportunities, since with more than two mobile operators, and in particular 3G bringing more data traffic, there will be more billing and therefore software requirements.

Another unique aspect to China is that it is the only country besides the United States with the desire and ability to build its own software industry. As a result foreign software companies cannot just invest in China to develop software for their global customers, they must also engage in the exciting opportunity to build China's software industry.

BEA will increase its 70 engineers in its first research and development center outside the United States by a "radical" amount and their task will be to develop products specifically for the Chinese market.

He said the contribution to global revenues from the Chinese market is still very small, but it is one of the fastest growing.

(China Daily December 9, 2005)