Ascom, a Swiss-based telecommunications equipment maker, has opened a joint-venture factory in Guangzhou where it plans to manufacture up to 50,000 'intelligent' pay phones a year.
The company already has sold about 18,000 of the pay phones, which can accept smart cards instead of coins, in the mainland in the past two years.
The company estimates more than 300,000 pay phones will be sold in the mainland in the next four years.
Ascom also opened a regional headquarters office in Hong Kong, which accounted for about 5 per cent of its US$2.3 billion in revenue last year.
The conglomerate made a wide range of products from telecom products such as telephones and network switches, to what the company calls 'service automation' products like ticket-vending machines and 'contactless' smart card systems, similar to the Octopus system in the MTR, Ascom president Hans Schroeder said.
'Our unique position is that we have both telecoms and service automation products,' he said.
In Hong Kong, its most high-profile project would be the single-use ticket machines installed in the MTR two years ago, which use pressure-sensitive touch screens.
