Global vendor strategies - 01/04/06

Siemens is selling its 12% stake in Epcos, a passive electronic component maker, for €90m. It has also sold its remaining 18% stake in Infineon for €1.1bn. Siemens is also close to spin off outsourcing business (in the SBS unit); CSC could be a potential buyer. It has already sold the hardware services part of SBS to Fujitsu Siemens Computers NV. Siemens' strategy seems to cut loss-making divisions as soon as possible, and targets ambitious profit margin for each of its 11 divisions by April 2007.

Nortel opens a new customer service center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

STMicro will invest some $500m in China to open a second plant Shenzhen.

IBM launched Tivoli Express targeting SMEs and VSMEs, answering SME needs, such as security, network, ERP, portal, costs cutting and customer care.

Google and Time Warner signed a deal, giving 5% stake in AOL unit to Google against a $1bn investment.