Hilversum, The Netherlands –  June 21, 2007 – NEC Philips Unified Solutions (NEC Philips)a joint venture of NEC Corporation (60%) and Royal Philips (40%) in enterprise communications, has further unfolded its growth strategy for the EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) market.

To take full advantage of the developments in enterprise communications towards convergence, system and application integration and unified communications, the company is organising itself to assume two main roles: that of communications equipment vendor and that of solutions provider.

The Communications Equipment Vendor Division will serve EMEA with NEC’s expanding global portfolio of systems and applications, which will increasingly be distributed through channel partners. The division’s drive is to focus on operational excellence in providing its channels with superior products from NEC.

The Solutions Division will address enterprise customers directly with a wide portfolio of Unified Communications solutions and IT services that provide organisations with customised solutions fully integrated into their business processes.  The division, that applies Direct Sales as well as a model of ‘Sell with’ and ‘Sell through’ Telco’s and system integrators, has achieved Microsoft Gold Certified Partnership in 6 competencies in a short period of time, a clear demonstration of its commitment and ambition in providing IT services.

Ad Ketelaars, CEO of NEC Philips Unified Solutions, maps out the company’s ambitions: “We are part of NEC’s global strategy to achieve over 10% share of the enterprise communications market worldwide. To this end, NEC is investing significantly in the development of platforms and applications that can be sold on a global scale, as well as investing further in its routes to market. We want to address the European market with more impact and are preparing ourselves to do so.”
 
Mr Ketelaars does not exclude mergers and acquisitions in implementing this strategy towards growth. “Our market approach will differ per country. In some countries we plan to grow organically, developing our skills and expertise to serve our customers across the ICT spectrum.

In a number of other markets, such as the UK, we wish to adapt more swiftly than we can facilitate organically and we plan to acquire activities to expand our capacity and skills to the required level of presence.

In countries where we do not see opportunity to acquire other parties, we plan to merge our local organisation into that of another entity, enabling our customers and employees to benefit from the enhanced impact and services this will provide. Belgium is an example of a country where we are seriously considering this option, although an acquisition is also not excluded”.

Mr Ketelaars concludes: “We believe this positions us to serve our customers even better, exploiting the full width of IT and communications solutions. At the same time this will create more opportunities for our employees and channel partners in developing our customer base and adding new skills and services.”