Ron Edgerton, SigmaTel president and CEO, explains how the Hong Kong headquarters will spawn a rapid expansion in the region

Asia accounts for over 95 per cent of the company's sales, president and CEO Ron Edgerton explained. He said Hong Kong is the ideal centre point for all future activities in the region, including the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Korea.

"Asia is flush with opportunities, and having a local identity focused on applications and technical support will allow us to more easily meet our customers' expectations and deliver outstanding service," Mr Edgerton said.

SigmaTel is a leading provider of anaglog intensive, mixed-signal integrated circuits. It designs and develops a variety of products for the consumer electronics and computing sectors, including MP3 players, notebook and desktop PCs, DVD players, digital televisions and set-top boxes.

Mr Edgerton said the new Hong Kong office would serve as the company's Asia engineering centre, directly supporting its customers' needs in real-time and, more importantly, as a local entity.

Local presence a key strategy

"This region is known worldwide as the manufacturing centre for consumer electronics. With more than 95 per cent of our direct product sales going to manufacturers in the Asia-Pacific region, it is important for us to establish a local presence, both from a sales standpoint and from a customer support standpoint."

When choosing the company's platform to Asia, Hong Kong was the ideal choice, he added. "Hong Kong is known as the business hub of Asia. It is also well established as the transportation centre, enabling commerce between all major industrial nations in the region."

The company also wanted its regional headquarters to be staffed locally, and found in Hong Kong the skills, experience and global experience necessary to fill its needs. "We are very pleased with the talent pool available in Hong Kong," Mr Edgerton said.

Initially, the Asia engineering centre in Hong Kong will focus on applications support, with back-up provided by a fundamental core of experienced applications engineers located in the Austin office. Over time, SigmaTel expects to fully develop future products within both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.

 "We are very excited about the opportunities in the entire Asia-Pacific region and are thrilled to have our Asian headquarters in Hong Kong," Mr Edgerton said.

"Being established in this way will allow us to push forward with additional regional offices. We are looking at adding new offices in Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo within 2005 and 2006."

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