EMC forms JV with Digital China
Updated: 2008-03-19 10:33
EMC Corp, the world's largest data storage company, established a 50-50 joint venture with Hong Kong-listed Digital China yesterday, trying to further tap the nation's booming IT market.
The new venture - EMC's first in Asia - is expected to provide information infrastructure solutions, services and support for the Chinese market. It will also help its two parents to attract partners in the information storage sector, even through mergers and acquisitions.
No financial details of the venture were disclosed.
"This is about how we grow in the years ahead in China," said Steven Leonard, president of EMC Asia Pacific-Japan. "China is now one of the world's fastest growing and strategically important markets."
EMC, whose products store e-mail and documents on computer networks, has transformed itself into an information management company by shifting to software sales over the years.
The company said it would invest $1 billion in China before 2012, to carve a larger slice in the nation's data storage market. Websites and Internet content have witnessed explosive growth in China.
According to American IT research firm IDC, the total storage capacity in China will grow 30-fold from 132 petabytes in 2004 to nearly 4,000 petabytes in 2011.
NASDAQ-listed EMC now has two research and development centers and more than 1,000 software and services engineers in China. The company is also expecting the new venture, to help serve the needs of its customers in China, said Denis Yip, president of EMC Greater China.
"The joint venture will expand Digital China's ability to further grow its IT services business," said Guo Wei, Digital China's board chairman and CEO.
The Beijing-based company is now the largest IT products distributor and systems integrator in China, according to IDC.
Digital China, a spin-off from the world's fourth largest PC maker Lenovo Group, has been trying to boost its IT services business as profit margin in distribution has been declining over the years.