When most people in the United States hear the name “Hyundai,” they think of a car. But the reach of the Hyundai organization is extensive, and for the past six months, its electronics subsidiary has been readying itself to become an influential-and recognized-player in the U.S. wireless industry.
Founded in 1983, Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd.’s main focus for many years was on memory products. The company also produces wireless handsets and infrastructure such as base stations. The majority of its equipment has been deployed in Asia, especially in Korea, where the company dominates in the subway systems and urban areas.
“One of the biggest obstacles we had initially was overcoming the perception that Hyundai is a car company. In the area of telecom, we’re probably where the memory business was in the U.S. 10 years ago,” said John Klinestiver, senior vice president and general manager of Hyundai Electronics America in San Jose, Calif.
Thousands of wireless phone users in the United States actually use Hyundai’s Code Division Multiple Access handsets, but most don’t know it because the phone is distributed under Audiovox Corp.’s brand name.
According to Klinestiver, Hyundai’s push to become a stronger force in the wireless industry started last year when the company acquired LGSemicon, a semiconductor company. Since that acquisition, he said the company “really realized that it just cannot be a memory company.”
Of course, breaking into the seemingly impenetrable U.S. wireless infrastructure market will not be a simple task. The highly competitive nature of the market, which is saturated with power players like Lucent Technologies Inc., Ericsson Inc. and Motorola Inc., is one of the main reasons why Klinestiver said Hyundai Electronics is taking most of this year to prepare.
“This year is the year for doing the trials and the interops. We need to do all our homework this year to position ourselves for this next year,” said Klinestiver.
“Since November of last year, we did a Reno trial with AirTouch (Cellular, now Verizon Wireless) and we’ve been trying to keep the momentum up. We finished doing an interoperability trial with Nortel (Networks) a month ago and we are in the process of preparing for trials with other service providers,” he said.
Hyundai Electronics realistically does not hope to directly compete with Lucent, Ericsson and others. Instead, Klinestiver said the company will become a “fourth vendor,” and form alliances and partnerships with other companies to get its foot in the door and capitalize on upcoming third-generation and Voice over Internet Protocol equipment and services.
Today the company employs 2,500 people, 1,000 of which are research-and-development engineers. Klinestiver said the company’s product line lends itself to the microcellular environment, and some of its flagship products include the Hyundai CDMA micro and pico base station transceiver subsystems. The company also offers fixed wireless terminals and wireless intelligent network solutions.
“We think we have an advantage over our competitors because our goal is to provide end-to-end telecom solutions … Some of our other competitors are just in the systems segment and handset segment. With our relationship with Hyundai Motors, you get into things like telematics. Actually having a relationship with Hyundai gives us an advantage by having access to the market,” said Klinestiver, although he noted Hyundai has no immediate plans to deploy telematics technology.
