BenQ
| BenQ Corporation
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | April 21, 1984/2007 |
| Seat | Taipei, Taiwan |
| management |
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| Number of employees | over 2,300 (10/2007) |
| sales | $ 1.83 billion (2007) |
| Website | www.benq.de |
The BenQ Corporation [ ˈbenkjuː ] is a supplier of high-tech products from Taiwan . The company employs 2,300 people worldwide and manufactures information technology and consumer electronics products.
history
The company was founded in April 1984 as a subsidiary of the computer manufacturer Multitech (later Acer ) and was originally called Acer Peripherals. The name BenQ it received in 2001 to the company's motto to emphasize more strongly: " B ringing E njoyment a n d Q uality to Life" ( English for: "Bring joy and Quality to Life"). At that time as a contract manufacturer of mobile phones and PC - Accessories active company was under the leadership of KY Lee at this time under its own brand independently.
The former Acer company has 1,300 patents for memory, display, image and communication products. The company invests around four percent of its revenues in research and development worldwide. With around 1200 engineers, this is concentrated in the Hsinchu Lab in Taiwan , as well as spread across two other locations in Suzhou ( People's Republic of China ) and San Diego ( USA ). Production takes place in Malaysia , Mexico , China and Taiwan .
In two years sales doubled to $ 4 billion and profits rose from $ 100 million to $ 250 million. A third of this already comes from the sale of Joybook - notebooks , flat screens , video beamers , Joybee - MP3 players and cell phones . In order to make the new brand better known in Europe, BenQ invested 18 million euros in advertising and wanted to sponsor the European Football Championship 2008 and statistician for the EM website , but withdrew this commitment due to the scandal and loss of reputation surrounding the takeover of Siemens Mobile back. In 2005, the BenQ group had annual sales of $ 16.50 billion.
Even before the BenQ brand name was introduced, the Taiwanese company opened a German branch in Hamburg in August 2000 . In 2007 about 33 employees worked in the team. On January 1, 2010, BenQ relocated its German headquarters to Oberhausen . This decision is justified with the proximity to the European headquarters in Eindhoven .
According to its own announcement, the company wants to establish itself as a global brand for "digital lifestyle " in the future . According to BenQ's Germany boss Michael Grote, the company's goal is to position itself “somewhere between Sony and Samsung ”.
The Taiwanese manufacturer Lite-On took over the DVD burner division from BenQ in mid-2006. Lite-On paid more than 30 million euros to BenQ, thereby acquiring the entire BenQ drive division, its customers and gaining access to BenQ's drive patents. In return, BenQ received 13 percent of the shares in Lite-On and became its largest shareholder.
Since September 2007, the brand business (BenQ Corporation) and production (Qisda Corporation) have been managed separately. The old BenQ Corporation was renamed Qisda Corporation. The new name Qisda [ Jia DA ] stands for " Q uality I nnovation S peed D riving and A chievements" ( English for: "quality innovation speed drive and achievements"), the newly established, today's BenQ Corporation will operate as a subsidiary of Qisda .
Acquisition of Siemens Mobile
In 2005, BenQ took over the mobile phone division of Siemens AG and merged it with its own telecommunications division. With this, BenQ suddenly rose to become one of the six largest brand manufacturers for mobile phones in the world. The new division has been run under the name BenQ Mobile since October 1, 2005 and has its headquarters in Munich . This employed around 7000 people worldwide and was thus temporarily the largest of the three newly established areas of activity of BenQ (Communications, Consumer Electronics, Computing). According to the company, BenQ was able to continue selling its own cell phones under the Siemens brand name for a year and a half after the takeover on October 1, 2005, thanks to a license agreement with Siemens AG. The name brand BenQ-Siemens could be used for 5 years; This is the name under which all models introduced in 2006 were brought onto the market. After this time at the latest, the cell phones should then only be sold under the BenQ brand. The question of whether BenQ can financially cope with the takeover of the Siemens mobile phone division was considered open. Developments such as the closure of the location in Ulm , the sale of the location in Aalborg (Denmark) to the competitor Motorola , the announcement of a planned reduction of around 500 employees in Germany and the decline in the market share from around 5 to 3.5 percent showed Already that BenQ was facing huge problems in restructuring the business area taken over from Siemens.
On September 28, 2006, BenQ finally announced that it would stop payments to BenQ Mobile in Germany with immediate effect. "The sales and margin development for the Christmas business 2006 remained below expectations," said a BenQ spokesman. Since the share capital of BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co. OHG is only 25,000 euros, the company filed for insolvency at the Munich Local Court on September 29, 2006 . The 3400 employees of the company were combined in the OHG. Asset GmbH , which belongs to the mobile phone division and bundles the company's intellectual values, is not affected by the bankruptcy . BenQ wants to continue its global business with mobile phones of the BenQ-Siemens brand and now use the existing research, development and manufacturing capacities in Asia.
According to a spokesman for the Siemens Group, the 3,000 BenQ employees were given preferential treatment over external candidates when they were looking for a job in the Siemens Group until 2009. A relief fund was also set up to provide financial support to the employees. BenQ and the Siemens group are criticized because of the threat of job losses in the former Siemens plants. For the 3,300 laid-off employees, public funding of EUR 12.8 million from the European Globalization Fund is to be made available for retraining and reintegration from spring 2008 .
December 31, 2006 presented BenQ Mobile , the production one. On February 24, 2007 it was announced that the last interested party had dropped out and the company would be broken up.
Immediately after the German bankruptcy was announced, the BenQ share price rose sharply for a short time, but then fell sharply again.
In Germany there was a significant drop in sales of all BenQ product lines (not just cell phones). Furthermore, BenQ is struggling with a rapid loss of image in Europe, which favored, if not caused, this slump in sales. According to the insolvency administrator of BenQ Mobile, only the market in Russia was reasonably stable during the 2006/2007 Christmas business.
In March 2007, BenQ marketing director Jerry Wang announced a range of new devices for 2007, from the simpler cell phone to the smartphone and UMPC, to the Taiwanese EETimes. BenQ also announced that it intends to become one of the main sponsors of the 2008 European Football Championship in Austria and Switzerland in order to improve its image in Europe again, which in Germany, in view of the recent bankruptcy of BenQ Mobile, has been met with heavy criticism Unions and media came across. In the summer of 2007, it was finally announced that BenQ was renouncing its sponsorship of the 2008 European Football Championship.
In late March 2007, it was also announced that BenQ CFO Eric Yu had been arrested on suspicion of insider trading in Taiwan. The police and prosecutors had previously searched the BenQ headquarters in Taipei. The local financial supervisory authority wanted to clarify the suspicion that members of the BenQ management had carried out major share sales before the public announcement of major quarterly losses in October 2006 (at the time of the preliminary insolvency of BenQ Mobile) or in March 2006. Other top managers in the company were initially released after paying a bail. According to the public prosecutor's office, there is currently no investigation against CEO KY Lee. Still, following the arrests, the company's share price temporarily plummeted to its lowest level since the company was founded.
At the same time it became known that BenQ had diverted a sum of 504 million euros from BenQ Mobile just before the subsidiary had to file for bankruptcy. The approximately 4,350 creditors who have registered claims of almost 1.2 billion euros against the insolvent BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co. OHG, then planned a lawsuit against the parent company BenQ in Taiwan. As a result, there were renewed accusations among observers and in the media that BenQ was never interested in a rescue of the Siemens mobile phone division and that the subsidiary had deliberately led into bankruptcy.
Group structure / investments
The following companies belong to the BenQ Group:
- AU Optronics
- BenQ Corporation
- BenQ Guru Software Co.
- BenQ Hospital
- Cando Corporation
- Darfon Electronics Corporation
- Daxon Technology Inc
- Darwin Precisions Ltd.
- Daxin Materials Corporation
- Qisda Corporation
- Raydium Semiconductor Corporation
- Wellypower Co. Ltd.
Products
The BenQ range includes monitors, video projectors , large format displays, PC accessories such as computer mice, keyboards and speakers, image processing systems, as well as solutions for mobile communication and broadband technology. In the opinion of BenQ, the future of consumer electronics will lie in the combination of such components for both professional and private use .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e BenQ Executive Biographies. BenQ Global, archived from the original on January 2, 2010 ; accessed on January 6, 2010 (English).
- ↑ Presentation of the company. Retrieved April 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Benq Germany moves from Hamburg to Oberhausen. Retrieved August 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Wirtschaftswoche 25/2004
- ↑ Christian Klaß: Lite-On takes over BenQ's DVD burner division , golem.de, April 10, 2006
- ↑ www.dw-world.de and www.manager-magazin.de
- ↑ Brussels wants to help BenQ victims with 12.8 million euros heise online, September 27, 2007
- ↑ BenQ-Mobile bankruptcy: Ominous money transfer to BenQ - Golem.de
- ↑ BenQ Mobile is missing 500 million euros - CHIP.de ( Memento from June 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ BenQ Mobile: 4,350 creditors demand 1.2 billion euros - Golem.de
- ↑ "SZ": BenQ-Mobile bankruptcy preprogrammed - futurezone.ORF.at
- ^ BenQ Group ( Memento from December 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- BenQ Corporation share price on Yahoo Finance
- BenQ Germany