Networking gear maker 3Com, which has suffered several years of diminishing sales, hopes to turn its fortunes around through its joint venture with the mainland's Huawei Technologies.
Senior 3Com officials said the venture was on track to being operational in the next few weeks, paving the way for the company's return to profitability and prominence.
'We are confident that the joint venture will become the No 1 enterprise networking equipment supplier in China in the next three years and allow 3Com to be competitive in many markets around the world,' 3Com North Asia president David Tang said.
The emphasis on China means the 3Com-Huawei partnership is keen to seize business away from top foreign networking gear brands - including Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks - in a market expected to invest about US$120 billion on network infrastructure over the next four years.
This could help make up for years of disappointing sales for 3Com, which gave up on its large enterprise router business to focus on products for small companies after it reorganised and retrenched staff in 2000.
The Silicon Valley-based company formed an alliance with Huawei in March to develop a broad range of networking switches and routers.
