The Beijing Design Center is staffed by highly trained Chinese nationals functioning in multiple engineering disciplines, said Three-Five Systems, Inc. headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. The entire Chinese staff was trained to utilize the company's established procedures and is now fully equipped to design complete display modules and subsystems.

"Local design centers enable us to provide a valuable service to our customers around the globe," the company said in a statement. "Personal knowledge of local customers, language and culture, quick response time and real-time communication in the same time zone, and face-to-face interaction lead to early supplier involvement and allow us to help our customers bring their products to market quickly."

The Beijing center is supposed not only to promote the company's penetration of the domestic Chinese marketplace, but also to support ongoing programs in Asia, the company said.

According to Stanford Resources, a leading US display market researcher, worldwide shipments of LCDs for mobile handsets in 1999 reached 280 million units. Production in China will reach 40 million units in 2000 and sales in China have been doubling every year since 1997. Regarding the forecast for personal digital assistants (PDAs), Stanford Resources anticipates the world market for LCDs for handheld computers to reach over 6 million units in 2000 with China accounting for over 2 million of these units.

(Xinhua 11/8/2000)